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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23860357">Natalie Jones and the Mummy's Key</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironychan/pseuds/ironychan'>ironychan</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Adventures of Natalie Jones [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 22:20:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>93,622</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23860357</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironychan/pseuds/ironychan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The Committee for the Appraisal of Archaeological Peril is assigned to babysit a mummy on its way back to Egypt.  The museum is worried about a curse, but Princess Sitamun is guarding something much more complicated that will lead our heroes on a whirlwind tour of the Mediterranean, in search of the key to the end of the world.  This fic exists because I hate cruise ships right now.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Adventures of Natalie Jones [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1719481</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. A Committee Reunion</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was a rainy day in September when the Committee for the Appraisal of Archaeological Peril met for the second time at Buckingham Palace.</p><p>It was a very informal meeting, but then, their first official gathering, two months earlier, had been pretty casual, too.  They were an <em>ad hoc</em> department, with no regalia, no buildings, no documents, and no particular qualifications for membership other than having been at the Battle of the Tower and the Queen’s approval.  There’d been some hints that this new gathering would resolve at least some of those deficiencies, but Natasha Romanov – who for the past few years had been calling herself Natalie Jones and saw no reason to stop now – hoped not <em>too</em> many.  The last thing she wanted was any part of the pomp and bombast of British government.</p><p>The valet took her car at the end of the Mall, and two guards escorted her through the sea of tourists’ umbrellas and opened the ornate gates for her.  There, she was just in time to meet a second member of the Committee – Dr. Sam Wilson, their medical expert.  He grinned and waved to her.</p><p>“Natalie!” he said.  “How’ve you been?”</p><p>“Not bad!”  Nat shook his hand and then both, with the guards, hurried across the sprawling pavement towards the palace steps.  “I’m still working in the archaeology department at Dundee,” she said, raising her voice as thunder rumbled overhead.  “I’ve noticed my students are much more polite this year!”  Her deeds at the Battle of the Tower, and her past as a Soviet Spy, had been international news that summer.</p><p>Once they reached the arch over the main door, the rain could no longer reach them.  Nat took down the hood of her jacket, and Sam pulled his knitted hat off.</p><p>“What are <em>you</em> up to?” she asked, as the doormen let them inside.</p><p>“I’m working at the Raptor Rescue near Eccleshall,” Sam replied.</p><p>“Good for you.”  Nat nodded.  “Do the birds complain?”</p><p>“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Sam said.  “I thought <em>people</em> were whiny, but no – and the bigger the bird, the more of a baby they are.  There was this golden eagle, we named her Duchess, who swore up and down that she was <em>dying</em> when all she had was an infected talon.  I told her, <em>your dinosaur ancestors would be ashamed of you</em>.  We amputated her toe and gave her some antibiotics, and she’s back in the wild now.”</p><p>“That sounds perfect for you,” Nat said, smiling warmly as she gave her wet jacket to a butler.  Natasha herself would be the first to admit that her sense of empathy was badly stunted, but even to her there was something heartwarming about Sam not only getting to talk to birds, like Sir Sigurd in his favourite fairy tale, but finding a useful application for it.</p><p>The butler took their jackets away, and another man in a uniform entered the plush red-carpeted foyer.  “Sir Samuel?  Dame Natalie?” he asked, startling both of them – they were, each in their own professions, more used to being addressed as ‘Doctor’.  “Her Majesty is waiting for you.  If you would come with me, please.”</p><p>They followed him up a flight of stairs with an ornate, scrolling gilded railing, and down a hallway lined with mirrors and elaborate candelabras.  Halfway to the end of this, outside a set of carved wooden doors, three more members of the Committee were waiting.</p><p>Theses were good friends as far as Natasha and Sam were concerned, and there were more handshakes and even some hugs as everybody exchanged greetings.  Detective Inspector Sharon Carter was still working for the police in Inverness.  Sir Stephen of Rogsey sent most of his time there, too, in order to be close to her while he took online courses to catch up on the science and history he’d missed while being turned to stone for a thousand years.  The third person with them was a man in his sixties, short and a little overweight, with blue eyes and shaggy graying hair.  He smiled and held out his arms to Natasha.</p><p>“Hi, Ginger Snap!” he said.</p><p>“Hi, uh, Dad,” Nat replied, and then internally slapped herself for letting it come out in a stammer.  Normally she was a better actress than that, but somehow when it was this <em>personal</em> she slipped up.  If Allen Jones had noticed, however, he didn’t say anything – he just gave her a hug, holding her tightly and lifting her slightly off her feet.</p><p>“Sorry I haven’t been emailing,” said Nat.  “It’s been very busy since the school year started.”  A convenient excuse.</p><p>“I bet it has,” Allen replied, setting her down again.  “I hear you’re giving a talk on the Grail legend at Yale next year.”</p><p>“Yeah.  Apparently I’m an expert on it now or something.”  Nat shrugged.  The real Holy Grail had turned out to be very different from the stories.  “I still need to figure out what I’m going to say.  I’ll probably do all the research and throw something together the night before.  How’s Blackpool?”  Allen was working there as an electrician.</p><p>“Damp,” he said, “but it’s nice to be back to work.  Retirement was getting boring.”</p><p>Sam looked around at everybody gathered – someone was missing.  “Where’s Francis?” he asked.</p><p>The sixth member of the Committee was Mr. Clinton Francis from Barton-in-Fabis in Nottinghamshire, a man who’d briefly believed himself to be Robin Hood.  The delusion hadn’t lasted long, but when Francis got his memory back he’d been able to retain the legendary outlaw’s skill at archery.</p><p>“He texted,” said Sharon.  “He missed the train he was supposed to take and had to get a cab.  He’ll be here, just late.”</p><p>“That sounds about right for him,” Nat said.</p><p>“Oh, guess what?”  Sharon looped her arm through Sir Stephen’s and smiled proudly.  “Steve got a job!”</p><p>“Good for him!” said Allen.  “What’s he doing?”</p><p>“There is a chapel in the city of Inverness with a very fine stained glass window depicting the martyrdom of Saint Andrew the Apostle,” Sir Stephen explained.  “The window was damaged by some godless vandals and since I am familiar with the painting of glass, the city has engaged me to repair it.  I am to use as much of the original glass as possible, and paint the new pieces to match.”</p><p>“That’s great,” said Nat.  Before the Lady of the Lake had made him a warrior, Sir Stephen had wanted to be a painter.  Restoring medieval windows was ideal, and would keep the restless man from getting bored.</p><p>The carved doors opened, and two security men in elegantly tailored suits stepped out to check everybody’s identification one last time.  Once they were satisfied that everything was in order, the taller one showed them into the room.  “Right this way,” he said.  “Her Majesty the Queen and his Grace the Earl of Hamcester are inside.”</p><p>Beyond the door was an immense drawing room with turquoise rugs and gilded furniture.  The walls were hung with portraits of people in wigs and fancy coats, many of them larger than life-sized.  General Fury, the recently-created Earl of Hamcester, was waiting just inside, and greeted them with a smile.  Fury was the head of the CAAP, although he hadn’t yet had the opportunity to <em>do</em> anything in that capacity and appeared to have hoped he never would.  He had also made it known that he hated the idea of having a title, which was perhaps why he was dressed in his military uniform, with an eyepatch.</p><p>“What happened to the glass eye?” asked Sam.</p><p>“My grandkids like the patch better,” Fury replied.  “They say it makes me look like a pirate.  I figure the novelty will wear off and they’ll miss me popping the glass eye out and back in again.”</p><p>“Down here!” called a voice from the far end of the room.</p><p>There, on an elaborately carved and brocaded Louis the Fifteenth sofa with man embroidered cushions, was the Queen of England.  It was only ten in the morning, but she already had a drink in her hand, and was watching as a woman knelt on the carpet giving a pedicure to one of her Majesty’s pet corgis.  The Queen was dressed in a shade of fuchsia that clashed violently with the turquoise carpeting, and made it difficult to look directly at her.</p><p>“Nice to see you all looking well,” said the Queen as they gathered around her – standing, since even knights and dames didn’t sit in the presence of the monarch without permission.  “Sir Stephen, you’re looking as offensively attractive as ever.  Where’s the sixth guy?”</p><p>“He missed the train, your Majesty,” said Sam.  “He’s on his way.”</p><p>The Queen nodded and tossed back her drink, then held out the glass for another servant to refill.  “Well, I’ve a lot to do today.  I’m opening a women’s centre in Vauxhall at lunchtime, and then I’m heading up to Suffolk to look for a stud.”</p><p>There was a pause.  Nobody dared say anything.</p><p>“For my racing stables,” the Queen finished, disappointed.  “So let’s get down to business.  I’ve got a surprise for you!  Stop looming over me like bloody Stonehenge, and I’ll show you.”</p><p>The present members of the CAAP thanked her and arranged themselves on the sofas and ottomans around her.  The corgi regarded them with suspicious eyes.</p><p>“First of all,” the Queen said, “we have these.  Michaels, you’re up.”</p><p>One of the men in suits – evidently Mr. Michaels, or perhaps Agent Michaels – stepped forward and handed out leather-bound booklets the size of passports.  The black covers were undecorated, but when Natasha opened hers she found a photograph of herself, with her name and an identification number, on one side.  On the other was a gold badge with a stylized depiction of the White Tower in front of the image of Sir Stephen’s magical shield, with heraldic supporters on either side.  Instead of the traditional British lion and unicorn, these were a gorilla and a saber-toothed tiger, two of the sculptures that had come to life in the castle grounds.  The whole thing was topped by a horseshoe wreathed in ivy, and at the bottom was a banner that said <em>Committee for the Appraisal of Archaeological Peril</em>.</p><p>“The College of Heralds finally came up with something I didn’t hate,” the Queen said, “so we are pleased to present you with your badges.  Museums and archaeological sites across the country and our remaining overseas territories have instructions to let you in if you’ve got one of these.  Promise me you won’t use them to rob anybody.”</p><p>“I’ll give Mr. Francis his, if and when he shows up,” said Natasha, taking Clint’s badge as well.  She looked over at Allen, who was smiling and shaking his head with his own badge in his hands.  He’d never imagined he’d have anything like it.</p><p>“Thank you, your Majesty,” said Fury formally.  He tucked his badge into his breast pocket.</p><p>“Second,” the Queen went on, “we’ve got your first proper assignment.”</p><p>That made everyone look up.  Exactly what the CAAP was supposed to <em>do</em> was a little uncertain.  The Holy Grail and Kracness Circle had been some very perilous archaeology indeed, but nobody was sure what else might fall under their jurisdiction.</p><p>“As you may have read in the news,” said the Queen, “the Victoria and Albert is giving the sarcophagus and mummy of Princess what’s-her-name…”</p><p>“Sitamun, your Majesty,” said Agent Michaels.</p><p>“Yes, her.  They’re giving her back to Egypt as some sort of gesture of reconciliation or something, although as I understand it, it was the French who stole the damned thing.  It’s being put on a train next month to go to Cairo, where a Dr. Hawass will take charge of moving it to <em>their</em> museum.  The folks in charge are a bit worried about the whole affair and have requested that you go along.”</p><p>“In case the mummy comes to life?” Sharon asked cautiously.</p><p>“Seems so.”  The Queen shrugged.  “It’s a mummy, after all.  There’s probably six different curses on the musty old bitch and they’re taking no chances.”</p><p>Nat looked around at the others, curious what they thought.  Babysitting a corpse wasn’t exactly the sort of thing they’d had in mind when they’d agreed to be part of this organization.  On the other hand, it sounded far less <em>eventful</em> than their last engagement, and nobody appeared to have any objections.</p><p>“So we just drop the mummy off in Cairo and then we come home?” she asked.</p><p>“You can sightsee a bit.  I won’t stop you,” said the Queen.  “But that’s all the museum folks want, is you tagging along just in case.”</p><p>“We can do that,” Sharon decided.</p><p>“Absolutely,” Natasha agreed.</p><p>“I always wanted to see the pyramids,” said Allen.</p><p>“Wonderful.”  The Queen smiled.  “I’ll let them know, and they – I don’t know, it’s probably one of the MI’s that’s handling it, but don’t ask me which one – can give you the itinerary.  Now, does anybody want a drink before I run off?”</p><p>The group turned down alcohol, since it was still early in the morning, but they did allow the butler to serve them tea and coffee.  The Queen puttered off with her corgi, its nails now painted to match its mistress’ dress, trotting behind her, but Fury stayed a bit to chat.</p><p>About ten minutes after her Majesty had left, Clint Francis arrived.  He was soaking wet and holding a Starbucks cup in one hand, and panting as he was escorted in by two guards who were jogging to keep up with him.</p><p>“Hi!” he said cheerfully.  “What did I miss?”</p><p>Natasha grinned.  “Everything.”</p><p>“Figures,” he said, sitting down on the sofa without a care for his own wet clothing or the very expensive fabric.  “Who wants to fill me in?”</p><p>She gave him his badge, which delighted him, and Sharon explained about their date with the mummy.  Clint thought it sounded like a ridiculous thing to worry about but agreed to tag along and then the group decided they should take this opportunity to have lunch and spend a little time together.  Natasha worried there was no way six people would be able to agree on a restaurant, but Clint’s suggestion quickly carried the day.</p><p>“How about one of the Asian places in Whitechapel?” he suggested.</p><p>“I could go for that,” Sharon said.</p><p>“It’s not my own favourite,” Clint added, “but I asked Laura if she wanted me to bring her anything back from London, and she asked for some real curry spices from Brick Lane Market.  The stuff you buy in bags from Tesco is no good at all.”</p><p>Allen grinned.  “Well, if your pregnant wife wants curry, we’d better get her some!”  His memories weren’t real, and he knew that, but Natasha also knew that they <em>seemed</em> real to him.  It made her wonder what he remembered his wife Kathy craving when she was carrying their daughter.</p><p>So with their cars safely parked in the palace garages, they took the tube to Brick Lane and ended up at City Spice, a well-lit Bangladeshi restaurant with red and white walls.  It smelled wonderfully of ginger and onions, and they sat down at a big round table to a meal of kebabs, naan bread, and vegetable bhaji.</p><p>“How are your studies going?” Allen asked Sir Stephen.</p><p>“Slowly,” Sir Stephen replied with a sigh.  “History has always interested me and I’m having no trouble with that, but the <em>mathematics</em> a person is expected to know, that’s simply absurd!  When will I ever need to calculate the hypotenuse of a triangle?”</p><p>“Probably never,” said Sam.  “I don’t think I’ve done it since undergrad.”</p><p>At the same time as this conversation was happening, Natasha was talking to Clint.  “Do you know yet if the baby’s a boy or a girl?” she asked him.</p><p>“Hmm?” he asked, mouth full of naan.  Clint was partially deaf, especially on the left, and if he wasn’t looking at the speaker he often missed what had been said, even if he were wearing his hearing aids.</p><p>“The baby,” Nat repeated, a little louder.  “Boy or girl?”</p><p>“Oh!”  He chewed and swallowed.  “It’s a boy!  A girl we were going to call Natalie, so this one’s gonna be Nathaniel.”</p><p>That was so unexpected that it actually took Nat a moment to realize what was surprising about it, and then a chill ran over her.  “You’re naming him after <em>me</em>?” she asked, astonished.  Nobody had ever done such a thing for her.  She’d never even <em>dreamed</em> that anyone would want to.  It was the sort of honour Natasha Romanov simply didn’t deserve.</p><p>Allen had overheard, and he was delighted.  “Congratulations!” he said.</p><p>“You were the one lying there grabbing at the Grail and shouting that we were all going to be okay,” Clint explained.  “If anything got my memory back outside of me just wanting it really badly, that was it.”</p><p>“Well, thank you,” said Natasha uncomfortably.  She felt like she ought to say something else, but couldn’t come up with anything.  What she <em>wanted</em> was to protest that she didn’t deserve that, that this unborn child deserved better than to be saddled with the name of someone who’d done far more harm in the world than good.  That was no way to accept a compliment, though, so she just took a big bite of lamb off her kebab so she wouldn’t have to speak.</p><p>“Are you two planning to have kids?” Clint asked, pointing from Sharon to Sir Stephen and then at Sharon again.</p><p>The two of them looked at each other, and Sir Stephen turned a bit red while Sharon laughed.</p><p>“We’re not yet married!” Sir Stephen protested.</p><p>“That doesn’t matter to some people,” Clint pointed out.</p><p>“I know, marriage is not so sacred as it once was,” said Sir Stephen, “but I will hold it so.”</p><p>“He just doesn’t want to have to confess it to the priest every single week,” Sharon teased.  “Anyway, I don’t know if I want to start a family before I make Chief Inspector.  When I was a girl everybody was always telling me I’d have babies someday, but nobody ever told me I’d be a detective.”</p><p>“She does enjoy doing the opposite of what people say,” Sir Stephen said affectionately.  “Even myself.”</p><p>“<em>Especially</em> yourself.”  Sharon poked him in the nose.  “Natalie,” she added, “I wanted to ask earlier, but <em>did</em> the Egyptians actually put curses on their tombs?  Or is that just a legend?”</p><p>Nat was still chewing, but she was far happier to talk about tomb curses than baby names.  She washed her mouthful down with a drink of water and said, “not really.  At least, not any worse than Shakespeare’s.”</p><p>“Shakespeare’s tomb has a curse?”  Allen was startled.</p><p>“It sure does,” she said, and recited: “<em>good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbeare, to digg the dust encloased heare.  Blese be ye man yt spares thes stones, and curst be he yt moves my bones</em>.”</p><p>“Does it work?” asked Allen.</p><p>“I don’t know.  Nobody’s ever dug him up to check,” said Nat.  “I <em>think</em> the Egyptians probably wrote some similar things on their tombs, but I’m a medievalist, not an Egyptologist.  I know there were a couple of accidents that happened to Howard Carter’s people when they opened the tomb of King Tut, but archaeology was dangerous back then and they weren’t very careful.  Carter himself died in his own bed at the age of sixty-five, so I doubt there was anything to it. </p><p>“So the mummy’s not likely to get up and start breaking necks,” said Sam.</p><p>Natasha shrugged.  She <em>wanted</em> to say no, it wouldn’t, and that she didn’t believe in such things.  Perpetrating mummy curse stories made Egypt sound like a fairytale kingdom instead of a perfectly ordinary country with an impressive past and some very serious modern problems.  Yet after the Battle of the Tower, when the world had found itself confronted with the Holy Grail, the Loch Ness Monster, and a variety of other mythology come to life… she no longer felt qualified to say what was real and what was not.  She doubted <em>anybody</em> was.</p><p>So she settled for making a joke of it.  “I certainly <em>hope</em> not,” she snorted.</p><p>“If it does, how are we to stop it?” Sir Stephen mused.  “We found two witches to help us shake the goblin Zola.  How does one break a mummy’s curse?”</p><p>Nat still wasn’t sure the two women in the New Age shop in Inverness counted as ‘witches’.  “I imagine a flamethrower would do the trick,” she said.</p><p>Allen laughed, then stopped himself, not sure if she were joking or not.</p><p>A waiter stopped by to ask them if they were enjoying the meal.  They assured him it was great, and Clint took the opportunity to ask about the best place to buy spices.  The waiter started to recommend some brands, but then Clint mentioned it was for his pregnant wife.  Hearing <em>that</em>, the man pulled a page off his order pad and wrote the name and address of a shopkeeper on it.</p><p>“That’s where I went for mandaputtu when my wife was expecting our daughter,” he said, handing the page to Clint.</p><p>“Thanks,” said Clint.  “Much appreciated.”</p><p>Clint was the First to bid the others <em>namaste</em> and leave the table, hoping to get his shopping done before catching the train home.  The others drifted away one by one, until there were only two left.  One was Natasha, munching on the last of the bhaji – she’d been raised in a world where food could be snatched away at a moment’s notice, and hated to leave anything on her plate.  The other was Allen Jones, who had ordered a beer and was drinking it slowly so he’d still be able to drive home.</p><p>“So what’s been keeping you busy?” he asked Nat.</p><p>She winced.  “Oh, the usual stuff,” she said, as if everything were totally normal.  “I’m teaching two classes this term, and I’m working on a paper about how King William had to alter the original plans for the Tower to get the Grail in there.  I’m not dating or anything, and I’m not doing field work, so I doubt it’s anything you’d be interested in.”  Did he think her silence meant she was hiding something?  Natasha hoped not, because she really didn’t.  The reason she didn’t answer his email was because she didn’t think she had much to say.</p><p>“I <em>am</em> interested, though,” Allen said.  “It doesn’t have to be anything world-shaking.  All <em>I</em> do when I email is tell stories from work and things like that.  It just like to hear from you.”</p><p>Nat shrugged again.  “Do you?  Or do you want to hear what your daughter would have said?”</p><p>“No.  I want to hear from <em>you</em>,” said Allen.  “I know you’re not the daughter I remember.  I want to know who you <em>are</em>.”  He wasn’t upset at all, just gently encouraging, and his smile seemed genuine enough. </p><p>That was the problem, Natasha thought.  She wasn’t used to letting people get to know her.  She’d been trained to keep herself bottled up, to never get close to people, lest they compromise her dedication to the task at hand.  When she <em>did</em> communicate, it was essential information only.  That was one thing her students had remarked on repeatedly when they did those professor evaluation surveys: she was very <em>focused</em>, and sometimes had to be asked to slow down and give more detail.  Nat <em>wanted</em> to treat Allen like her father, but it was hard.</p><p>“I don’t do it on purpose,” she said.  “I just… I don’t know <em>how</em> to do that.”  Even being as honest as admitting that was difficult.</p><p>“Then you should practice,” he said.  “If you feel like you need something to talk <em>about</em>, why don’t you tell me about your life?  Where you grew up, how you ended up here?”</p><p>He was trying to help, but that was the worst thing he could ask to hear.  “You wouldn’t want to know,” she said.  “I told you, it’s not a nice story.”</p><p>What Natasha would have liked, really, was to learn what <em>he</em> thought her life had been like.  What memories did he have of her as a child, or of his wife?  These things hadn’t really happened, but she was curious what forms they might take in his memory.  She’d never asked, though, and she was determined never to do so no matter how tempting it might be.  Whatever he told her would be a lie.  Her truth would only hurt him, but his lies would make her miserable thinking of a life she could have had.  Natasha had had enough of lies.</p><p>“You said an ugly truth is better than a beautiful lie,” Allen reminded her.</p><p>She <em>had</em> said that, and she still believed it, but… “sometimes it might be better to have neither.”</p><p>“Then what are we supposed to talk about?” Allen asked.</p><p>“I don’t think we have to talk at all,” said Nat.  “Families don’t always have to talk to each other.  We could <em>do</em> something together instead.”  That seemed much easier, much better for not scaring anybody off or having to lie to anyone.  “Why don’t we go to the Victoria and Albert Museum?  I doubt we’ll get to <em>look</em> at the mummy while it’s being shipped, so let’s go see it while it’s still there.”  That seemed reasonable.  That seemed like something a father and a daughter could do together without having to talk to each other.</p><p>Allen didn’t look <em>happy</em> with that plan, but he nodded.  “All right, let me finish my drink.”</p><p>As they left the restaurant a few minutes later, Natasha decided she owed Allen an apology.  “I’m sorry, Dad,” she said.  It still didn’t feel right calling him that, but she was working on it, trying to <em>force</em> it to be natural.  “I’m not used to this.  I’m trying, I promise.”</p><p>“I believe you, Ginger Snap,” Allen said gently.  “You take all the time you need.”</p><p>He meant it, too… which made Natasha wonder if that, like having a child named after her, was something she simply did not deserve.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Not At Rest</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>October passed quickly, the weather damp but warm by the standards of somebody who’d spent time out on the Siberian tundra.  Natasha often walked to classes with only a hooded sweatshirt to keep her warm and dry.  People would ask her how she could stand it, and she would just shrug and remind them that she was Russian.  Nat’s handlers in the Red Room had used to tell her she was weak in order to make her work harder – so it always made her smile when people were impressed by her strength.</p>
<p>Towards the end of the month, with the weather unseasonably cold, the CAAP gathered again at Folkestone.  They arrived in time to see the coffin of Sitamun loaded onto the train to go through the Chunnel, so they got coffee and stood on one of the walkways over the rail yard to watch.</p>
<p>There wasn’t much to see.  When Nat and Allen had visited the Victoria and Albert, the sarcophagus had been on display inside a temperature-controlled glass case with guards on either side of it.  It was one of the most precious objects in the museum’s entire collection, some thirty-five hundred years old and carved from a single enormous block of alabaster.  The hieroglyphics that decorated the outside were gilded and inlaid with semi-precious stones.  Even in the dim lighting, and surrounded by other treasures, it was breathtaking.</p>
<p>The mummy inside hadn’t fared as well as its container.  Princess Sitamun had been unwrapped at an Edwardian party, and her various custodians over the years had kept her in attics, garden sheds, and even a smoking lounge before the museum finally took charge of her.  Rather than being black and leathery, she was grayish-brown and covered with frayed cracks, like leather that had been left out in the elements.  Conservators in Egypt were reportedly eager to have a look at her, hoping that their expertise and their country’s dry climate could stop her deteriorating any further.</p>
<p>None of this was visible from the train station in Folkestone, though.  Sitamun and her magnificent coffin had been carefully packed up in an enormous crate that was now being lifted, very slowly and gently, by a mobile crane.  A few reporters were taking pictures while more employees waited nervously on the platform, watching the crane operator guide the load into the cargo car.</p>
<p>“I wouldn’t like to be any of those guys,” Clint observed as they watched.  “The <em>Post</em> said the mummy’s insured for sixty million pounds.  No pressure!”</p>
<p>“Does the insurance cover curses?” asked Sam.  “Or is that just how the company’s planning to get out of paying if anything happens?”</p>
<p>“It had better,” Sharon said.  “I did some research on this mummy, and it seems to be <em>extremely</em> cursed.”  She took her phone out and began scrolling through notes.</p>
<p>“Really?”  Sam leaned to look over her shoulder.</p>
<p>“Wikipedia has a long list of victims,” Sharon said.  “Here… okay, the sarcophagus and mummy were stolen from Egypt by Napoleon’s troops in 1799, and was then brought to England in the 1840s by a guy named Nicolas Desrosiers.  He suddenly died a week later, and the mummy vanished, but it turned up again in 1865 in the collection of a guy named Sir Richard Hart.  He announced he would be putting it on display, then fell from a horse and broke his neck the very next day.”</p>
<p>“It didn’t kill anybody in the twenty years in between,” Sam observed.</p>
<p>“Yeah, but then it made up for lost time.”  Sharon’s thumb flicked as she scrolled down.  “Hart’s daughter died a year later, along with her infant son… her husband choked to death on a grape and left the coffin to his brother, who had a heart attack at the funeral, and <em>his</em> widow was so scared of it she immediately sold it to another collector, who developed a gambling addiction, bet the mummy and lost, and hanged himself.  The fellow who won it from him supposedly had his house burn down and the coffin was the only thing that survived the fire.  By 1900 it was supposed to have killed at least twenty people and its last owner donated it to the museum.  It didn’t do him any good, since he was mugged and stabbed the day after.”</p>
<p>“Yikes,” said Allen.</p>
<p>“How much of that is true?” Natasha asked.  Wikipedia, after all, was something <em>anyone</em> could edit.  She’d done some research on Sitamun of her own, but she’d taken more of an interest in who this princess <em>was</em> and how her coffin had ended up in England.</p>
<p>“I tried to trace as many of the victims as I could,” Sharon put her phone away, “and the ones I managed to find did exist and died where and when the curse story says they did.  As far as I could figure none of them after Hart owned the mummy longer than ten years before something terrible happened.”</p>
<p>“Life was short and dangerous back then,” Nat pointed out.</p>
<p>“It was indeed,” Sir Stephen said.  “Particularly for women.  The Abbess at Rogsey told me once that for a woman to bear a child required more courage than for a knight to go into battle, for the risk to her life was greater.”  He put a hand on Sharon’s back.</p>
<p>Natasha noticed that he hadn’t ventured an opinion about whether a mummy could actually be cursed.  As the Committee member with the most direct experience of magic he ought to have been the one to know – but he’d grown up in Cornwall, not Egypt, and lived during a fantasy version of the eleventh century, not in ancient times.  There was a very good possibility that he’d never heard of such a thing.</p>
<p>“What about the museum?” asked Nat.  “It’s had her more than a century.  Did anything happen there?”</p>
<p>“I couldn’t find anything,” said Sharon.  “If there <em>is</em> a curse, maybe it’s only invoked when the mummy is privately owned.”</p>
<p>“I guess I wouldn’t want anybody showing off <em>my</em> corpse, either,” said Sam.</p>
<p>Inch by inch, the crane set the crate with Sitamun’s sarcophagus down on the skids that had been prepared on the train car.  Men moved in to unhook the chains and strap it down for the journey.  The man who’d been running the crane climbed down out of the cab, tottering as if he were about to fall over – a co-worker clapped him on the back and handed him an open bottle of beer, which went straight to his lips without even a pause for a <em>thank you</em>.</p>
<p>“He gets to keep his job,” Clint observed.</p>
<p>The successful loading of the mummy was the CAAP’s cue to leave their vantage point and board the passenger cars.  They grabbed their coats and carry-ons, and headed down the stairs and indoors.</p>
<p>“Even if the mummy does decide to get up and cause trouble, it’ll have a hard time getting out of its coffin with all those crates and straps around it,” Sam observed.  He took out his CAAP badge to show the guards at the station.</p>
<p>“In movies mummies don’t usually care about that sort of thing,” said Nat.  “I’d be more worried that if she tries she’ll just disintegrate.  She looked in pretty bad shape.”</p>
<p>Once on the platform, the group split in two to board the train.  Sir Stephen, Sharon, and Sam went on the car behind the mummy, while Nat, Clint, and Allen were on the one in front.  Other than them, the train was almost empty.  No commuters or vacation-goers were allowed on board, just the mummy and a few specialists, guards, and conservators who were there to look after it, and a few reporters who’d gotten special permission from the museums in both London and Cairo to cover the move.</p>
<p>Passengers weren’t normally allowed weapons of any sort on the Chunnel trains, but the security people had guns, and Sharon’s pistol was in its holster under her jacket.  Clint had also brought his archery equipment, having upgraded from Robin Hood’s medieval longbow to a modern Hoyt Buffalo.  He settled down in a window seat, and put the bow and quiver next to him.</p>
<p>“New arrows,” Allen realized, pointing to them.  Clint used several different types, all identifiable to the touch by the breaks in the fletching.  Today there were several new patterns.</p>
<p>“Yeah, I hit up those kids at Shrivenham for some more of the trick ones,” Clint said.  “At first I figured exploding arrows would take care of a mummy, no trouble, but then I remembered we’re gonna be in a tunnel under the ocean.  You don’t want a fire in there.  So instead, I got these.”  He pulled one out and held it up, showing a capsule of something in place of a head.  “Liquid nitrogen.  It’ll freeze the mummy solid, and we can just smash it.”</p>
<p>“Smart,” said Natasha, nodding.  “Although the people in Cairo will never forgive us.”  She and Allen sat down in the row behind Clint.</p>
<p>“They’ll still get their coffin back,” said Clint.  “That’s the expensive part.  I did get some fire ones, too, just for the hell of it… and these, for the boat ride!”  The mummy, train car and all, would be loaded on a cargo ship for the journey from Istanbul to Cairo.  Clint held up an arrow with a fishhook tip.</p>
<p>“What’s that?” asked Nat.</p>
<p>“A fishing arrow, obviously!” said Clint.  “You bait it and fire it into the water, and when something bites, it’s got a line to reel it back in!”</p>
<p>Natasha laughed.  “You really think you’re gonna use that?” she asked.</p>
<p>“I don’t know, but it’s damn cool,” Clint replied, sliding it back into his quiver.</p>
<p>A couple more people got on board, one of whom took a seat right across the aisle from Natasha and Allen.  This was a man in his thirties with blue eyes and short brown hair, and a bit of beard stubble.  He was wearing a rather battered blue jacket, having repaired some of the left sleeve with silver duct tape, and carrying a sports bag, which he put into the overhead compartment before sitting down and leaning across the aisle to talk to Natasha.</p>
<p>“You’re Dr. Jones, right?” he asked.  His accent was American.</p>
<p>“Yes, that’s me,” said Nat.</p>
<p>The man offered a hand.  “I’m Jim Barnes from the New York <em>Times</em>.  I’m covering the story.”</p>
<p>“Nice to meet you,” Natasha said guardedly.  Internally she was bracing herself.  There’d been several reporters who’d come to talk to her since the Battle of the Tower.  Most of them wanted details of her past as a Russian spy, which she didn’t want printed.  And in the past couple of weeks, there’d been some who wanted to know the story of Sitamun’s curse.</p>
<p>“They’re talking about this all the way to New York?” asked Allen.</p>
<p>“They sure are,” said Barnes.  “We’ve got a lot of Egyptian stuff in the Museum of Natural History <em>and</em> in the Met, and people are worried we’ll be expected to do the same kind of ‘gesture’ for Egypt as the Brits are.  The <em>Bugle</em> had a headline demanding to know if we’ll have to send Cleopatra’s Needle back next.”</p>
<p>“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Natasha said.  “I’m an archaeologist, not a politician.”</p>
<p>Barnes pulled out a digital recorder.  “Well, would you mind telling me, as an archaeologist, who Princess Sitamun was?  I figure that’s a more interesting an educational angle on this than anyone else will be doing.  The one thing everybody always seems to forget in any case with a dead body is who the victim was in life.”</p>
<p>Nat relaxed a little.  “Sure,” she said.  “Although I’m a medievalist, not an Egyptologist, so this is just what I’ve read in textbooks.”</p>
<p>“That’s fine,” said Barnes.  “Tell me.”</p>
<p>As the train pulled out of the station and headed into the dark mouth of the Chunnel, Nat decided to begin and the beginning.” "Sitamun was the daughter of a pharaoh of the seventeenth dynasty,” she said, ‘around 1580 BCE.  We don’t know very much about her.  She married her brother Ahmose, who was supposed to be next in line for the throne, but she died before he could be crowned…”</p>
<p>Barnes seemed honestly interested in what she was telling him, nodding and making sure his recorder was running – but halfway through her impromptu lecture, Natasha heard snoring.  She stood up to peer over the back of the seat ahead of her, and found that Clint was fast asleep.</p>
<p>“Am I that dull?” she asked nobody in particular.</p>
<p>“No, you’re not,” said Barnes with a smile.  “Not at all.  Keep talking.”</p>
<p>As they rumbled along in the dark, Nat found herself wondering what Sir Stephen, Sharon, and Sam were doing or talking about in the car behind.  Sir Stephen would probably be interested in the Chunnel itself.  Among the first things he’d commented on when he realized he’d awakened in the distant future was what ingenious engineers the people were.  The idea of a tunnel under the English Channel was one he’d probably find both impressive and terrifying.  Theoretically it left the islands open to invasion from the mainland, which had been one of the main objections to building it since the idea was first proposed in the nineteenth century.</p>
<p>“So if you don’t believe in mummy curses,” Barnes said, “what are you doing here?  Because that’s what all the tabloids are talking about: the UK government is so scared of a mummy’s curse that they’re sending it back to Egypt, with the people who defeated the Red Death for guards.”</p>
<p>Nat shook her head.  “We’re just a precaution,” she said.  “They’re trying to plan for everything, and after the Battle of the Tower, apparently magic is something we have to take into account.”</p>
<p>“Are you going all the way to Egypt?” he asked next.</p>
<p>“We’re planning to.  All the way to meet Dr. Hawass in Cairo.”</p>
<p>Barnes nodded.  “I’ve never been to Cairo,” he said, giving her a cockeyed smile.  “I don’t know if you’re planning to go right back to the UK after you hand over the mummy, but maybe once you’re done with that, we could have a look around the city together?”</p>
<p>Natasha blinked.  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been asked out.  She didn’t frequent places like pubs where she might be ‘picked up’, and men who actually knew her, like the ones who worked with her at the archaeology department, found her demeanour off-putting.  It was doubly surprising, too, when she considered Barnes’ profession.</p>
<p>“You’re a reporter,” she said.  “You collect facts – you must know I’m the one who was a Russian assassin on the lam before I became an archaeologist.”</p>
<p>“I do know that,” Barnes agreed with a single nod.  He was still smiling.</p>
<p>“And you still want a date?”  Nat raised her eyebrows.</p>
<p>“I’m a risk-taker,” he said.</p>
<p>“All right then.  Although we’re gonna be stuck in each other’s company on these trains for a couple of days first,” she warned him.  “What if by the time we get there, you’ve changed your mind?”</p>
<p>“I don’t think I’ll change my mind,” said Barnes.</p>
<p>Allen chuckled.  “Well, this is an unexpected development,” he observed.  “Not unwelcome, of course, but definitely unexpected.”</p>
<p>“Dad!” Nat exclaimed – and even though it did so in annoyance, part of her was proud of how easily the title came out this time.</p>
<p>“Oh, he’s your father?” asked Barnes.</p>
<p>“More or less,” said Natasha, who didn’t feel like explaining it.</p>
<p>“Geeze, only <em>just</em> asked you out and I’m already meeting your parents!”  Barnes laughed.  “Slow down, girl!”</p>
<p>Nat groaned.</p>
<p>The train emerged from the Chunnel in Coquelles and moved on to Calais, where the mummy crate and passengers transferred to one of the superfast continental trains that would take them east, around the Mediterranean to Turkey.  The transfer happened very quickly and behind tarps, so people couldn’t gather to stare, and Nat, Clint, and Allen didn’t get an opportunity to do more than wave to their friends in the other train car.  An hour later, they were back on their way.</p>
<p>The train sped off through rolling French countryside, under a bright blue sky with little fluffy clouds.  It was already warmer here than it had been in Kent.  The arable fields had been harvested to stubble, but the pastures were green with sheep and cattle grazing, and the lines of bocage between them still had some leaves.  People were out picking the last of the apples and pears.</p>
<p>Lulled by the hum of the electric train, Clint went back to sleep, while Natasha got her laptop out to try to work on her Tower paper.  Allen and Barnes, meanwhile, continued to chat.  By the time they arrived, Natasha thought, Barnes was going to know Allen better than he did her.</p>
<p>“So where did you grow up?” Allen asked.</p>
<p>“Um…”  Barnes paused.  “New York.  Brooklyn.”</p>
<p>Allen cocked his head.  “Had to think about it?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Yeah,” said Barnes with a grimace.  “Little… momentary lapse in ability to speak.”</p>
<p>“And here I thought that only happened to old people,” said Allen.  “I did that the other week in a pastry shop.  I couldn’t for the life of me remember the word <em>croissant</em> and I had to ask the clerk for a <em>cream-filled curly one</em>.”</p>
<p>Suddenly, the train gave a lurch.  There was a horrible squealing sound as the brakes locked, and people cried out in surprise at the violent deceleration.  Clint sat up straight with a holler, his bow in his hands before he was even properly awake.  Allen, who’d been wearing his seat belt, was nearly strangled by it – Natasha, who hadn’t, was thrown from her seat into the aisle.  Barnes landed on top of her, then scrambled to his feet, pulled his bag down from the overhead, and ran towards the back of the car, where it connected to the cargo car where the mummy was.</p>
<p>Natasha was right behind him.  Apparently the CAAP were going to work today, after all.</p>
<p>Barnes kicked the door open, and vaulted across the rattling connection to the mummy car.  The train was still in motion, and even though they were still slowing down, the tracks below were flickering by too fast for the eye to follow.  Nat could smell burning rubber and hot metal from the brakes.  She jumped after Barnes, who was at the far more secure door into the mummy compartment.  This he wrenched open with a crowbar… why had he brought that?</p>
<p>There was nobody in the carriage.  Just the dark space with the crate strapped to the floor, vibrating as the train tried to stop.  Could it be a curse after all?  Or was this an unrelated, mechanical problem?</p>
<p>Barnes wasn’t looking at the mummy case, though.  He had unzipped his bag, and took out a smaller cloth sack.  Inside were rectangular devices, each about the side of a cell phone but several times as thick, which he began attaching to walls of the car.  They looked an awful lot like explosives.</p>
<p>“Hey!”  Natasha grabbed his shoulder.  “What the hell are you doing?”</p>
<p>He turned and backhanded her across the face.</p>
<p>Nat reacted automatically, grabbing his wrist and twisting it out of the way.  She spun aside, wrapped her arms around his neck, and threw him to the ground.  He grabbed her around the middle and rolled over to pin her underneath him.</p>
<p>She pushed Barnes off her, and he staggered backwards as she somersaulted to her feet again.  For a moment they locked eyes.  He was as focused on her as she was on him… he had a job to do here and she was preventing him from doing it.  Nat wondered what she’d missed.  She was usually so good at reading people, and yet when he’d flirted with her, she’d noticed something.</p>
<p>“What the hell are you doing?” she demanded.  “You know who I am and you know what I’m capable of!”</p>
<p>Rather than reply, he ran at her again, and she kicked him in the stomach, just as the train finally ground to a full halt.  The momentum of that added to hers as she drove her foot into him, knocking him back to hit the door they’d just come in by, slamming it shut again.  He landed hard and had to sit there dazed for a moment, so Nat grabbed him by the collar.</p>
<p>“Answer me!” she ordered.</p>
<p>Behind her, the explosives went off.  She let herself fall on top of Barnes and rolled them back behind the mummy crate to protect them from the blast as fragments of wood and metal rained down.  A moment later, a dozen men in military camouflage gear, with gas masks hiding their faces, piled into the train car through the blown-out hole.  Metal cutters came out to snip the cables that held the mummy crate in place.</p>
<p>It was a <em>heist</em>, Nat realized.  Curses had nothing to do with this.  The mummy was actually being <em>stolen</em>.  She started to get up.</p>
<p>Barnes hit her again.</p>
<p>Nat fell forwards, and her head bounced off the edge of the open door.  Stars flickered in front of her eyes as she got back to her feet.  She managed to stagger forward a step or two, then lost her balance and dropped to her knees, cutting one on a sharp piece of metal.  One of the men in the camo gear rolled her out through the opening and let her fall onto the gravel beside the tracks.  The little stones dug painfully into her palms and embedded themselves in her cut knee, and her head was still spinning from the blow it had taken.  She would have to wait for a moment and recover before she could fight any more.</p>
<p>She could still <em>think</em>, though.  Barnes was clearly a plant – he’d been a plant the whole time, and his flirting with her had been part of that, to take down her guard and keep her from reacting when he made his move.  Worse, she’d <em>fallen</em> for it.  Even as she lay there waiting for the world to stop tilting back and forth around her, the thought made Nat absolutely <em>furious</em>.  She was supposed to be a <em>spy</em>, even if she were a retired one!  She was supposed to <em>notice</em> the signs!  Here she’d completely missed them… if there’d ever been any.  The only odd thing Barnes had done was momentarily forget the name of his home borough, and anybody could do that.  Either he was damned good at his job, or Natasha was just an idiot.</p>
<p>“Natalie!  Natalie!”  Allen was at her side, putting his arms around her to drag her to her feet.  “Are you all right?  Can you hear me?”</p>
<p>“Yes, I can hear you!” she said, wincing.  “You don’t have to yell.”</p>
<p>“You’re bleeding!”  He touched her scalp, which made her vision flash white.  “Oh, my god.  We need to get you to a hospital.  We need to call 911… no, wait, Europe is 999…”</p>
<p>“I’m fine,” she interrupted, as he half-led, half-carried her into the relative shelter of the bocage.</p>
<p>“No, you’re not!”  Allen showed her his fingers, which were stained with blood.  “Look at that!”</p>
<p>“Head wounds bleed, the scalp gets a lot of blood,” Nat insisted.  “If nothing is broken, I’m probably fine.  I’m gonna…” she tried to push him away from her and stand on her own.</p>
<p>“Oh, no, you don’t, young lady.”  Allen grabbed her firmly by the shoulders and marched her to the edge of the hedgerow to sit down at the foot of a very old, partially collapsed drystone wall.  “The others will handle it.  You’re hurt, and you’re not going to move.”</p>
<p>She glared at him.  “Seriously?”</p>
<p>“Seriously,” he said, and his face backed up the sentiment.  “You told me I hadn’t actually spent the last thirty-five years fathering you, so I’ve got a lot of time to make up for.  Now, sit still and let me apply pressure to the wound.”  He took a packet of tissues out of his jacket pocket, wadded some of it up, and pressed it against the back of her head.</p>
<p>If Nat had been in the middle of a battle with enemy agents, she would probably have been good for several more minutes of fighting before she fell over.  With Allen beside her insisting, she had no choice but to settle down and rest.  It probably made her feel <em>worse</em>, she thought.  If she’d been up and going, the adrenaline would have dulled the pain.  Without it, all she could do was sit her and watch <em>other</em> people fight, and feel her head wound throbbing.</p>
<p>The others hadn’t been sitting quietly in their seats while Allen took Nat away from the battle.  Peeking through the branches, she could see Clint shooting arrows at the thieves, who returned fire with their guns.  Sharon got in on the act, pulling out her pistol, and Sam had gotten a gun from somewhere, as well.  Sir Stephen rushed into the fray with nothing but his old Saxon-style shield, but its magic repelled bullets even at very close range, and it was perfectly good for hitting people with.</p>
<p>Clint hurried into the cover of the bocage and squatted next to Natasha and Allen.  He stuck the ends of several arrows in the dirt so he could get at them easily.  “Should’ve brought the flamethrower after all,” he muttered, pulling one out.  In a single swift motion, he stood, fired, and dropped back into the vegetation.</p>
<p>Then there was a <em>clang</em> as something metallic landed inside the train car.  Natasha heard a muffled explosion, and then smelled a familiar scent.</p>
<p>“Tear gas,” she said.  “Let’s get out of here.”  She took a deep breath, and held it.”</p>
<p>Allen helped her up again, Clint gathered up his arrows, and they crashed through the hedges and trees into the field beyond.  This was pasture, with sheep in the distance.  At the near end was a half-ruined barn, and through the fallen-down wall they could see a semi-truck with a trailer parked just behind the shell of the building.  This was easily large enough to transport the mummy case, and innocuous enough that nobody would wonder what was on board – especially with the grocery store logo painted on the side.</p>
<p>“We’ll have to do something about <em>that</em>,” Clint observed.  He pulled an arrow out, but Nat grabbed his arm.</p>
<p>“No explosions,” she ordered.  “We need at least one of them alive to question.”</p>
<p>“I wasn’t gonna,” he promised, and sure enough, he did not fire the arrow, though he took his bow with him as he darted through the remains of the barn.  Once on the other side he knelt beside the truck, looking for the fuel line.</p>
<p>The driver’s door opened.  Nat shouted Clint’s name, but in the general noise of people running around and exchange of gunfire, his hearing aids couldn’t pick her voice out of the din.  The driver, another man in a gas mask, dropped on Clint from above with a knife in his hand.</p>
<p>Natasha wiggled out of Allen’s grip and went to pull the man off Clint, but several more were already running at them from the other side of the truck.   She got a hold of the truck driver with her arm around his neck, and pried the knife out of his fingers, while Clint picked up his bow and fired an arrow at the approaching men.  He hit the lead one in the shoulder, and the men fell backwards into one of his fellows, whose gun went off by accident.</p>
<p>“Hold this guy!” Nat ordered, pushing the truck driver towards Allen.  Whatever happened, they needed at least one of these guys alive to question.  Allen caught him by the jacket, and took the strap of his gas mask to pull it off over his head.  Nat turned to get back to fighting the rest, but then she heard Allen’s horrified shout.</p>
<p>“What?” asked Nat.  She looked over her shoulder, and found Allen holding nothing but an empty jacket.  The man’s trousers and shoes were in a heap at his feet.  The person inside had simply melted away.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Dead Men Tell No Tales</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Natasha had seen somebody die of magic before.  There’d been the guy on the Scottish island of Flotta whose insides had been liquified by some kind of curse.  The people who’d performed his autopsy had likened it to Ebola, but they’d found no trace of the virus in his sy</p>
<p>This was different.  There was no blood, no groans of pain from the victim.  Instead, the clothes were simply empty, the person inside having vanished into thin air.</p>
<p>Allen stared for a moment at the jacket and mask in his hand, then threw them both on the ground in horror.  A puff of pale dust rose up, like ash from a campfire, but that was all.</p>
<p>“What <em>was</em> that?” he demanded of Natasha.</p>
<p>“I don’t know.  I didn’t see it,” she said.  “What happened?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” he echoed, “he just <em>wasn’t there</em>!”</p>
<p>There was a rustle in the bocage behind them, and a shiny object came flying through the air towards the truck and trailer, with vapor hissing out of it.  It bounced off the side of the vehicle and landed at Natasha’s feet, where she just barely had time to see that the writing on it was in the Cyrillic or Greek alphabet.  Then the white mist rose up, and she realized there was nothing more they could do now.  They had to get out of the affected area before the tear gas overwhelmed them.</p>
<p>She grabbed Clint and Allen by the arms, and the three of them limped into the vegetation.  Behind them, they could hear voices shouting, metal scraping, and the truck engine starting, but they could not look to see what was happening.  Natasha’s eyes welled up and she had to keep them closed to counter the ferocious itching, and they found the stone wall again only when they physically stumbled into it.  They climbed over and sat down on the other side, coughing, wheezing, and scrubbing at their noses and eyes.</p>
<p>That was where the security men found them a few minutes later.  One had a bottle of water, with which they rinsed out their eyes before getting up and staggering back to the train.  Clint and Allen, on either side of Natasha, both had eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot, and she didn’t doubt she looked the same.</p>
<p>The fight was over now.  Sam had somehow gotten a great big splinter in his hand, and Sharon was pulling it out for him with her nail tweezers.  Sir Stephen, meanwhile, was inspecting the dead bodies around the half-destroyed cargo car.  There were three.</p>
<p>No, Nat realized a moment later, there was only one.  The others were just empty clothes with a gray substance smeared on them, like the dust that had risen when Allen dropped the jacket.  Sir Stephen prodded one of these with his foot, and frowned.</p>
<p>Natasha went over to the body that remained.  It was a man around six feet tall, lying face-down beside the tracks.  He was dressed in a black nylon jacket, blue jeans, and there was another gas mask over his face.  Nat squatted down to roll him over and took his pulse at the wrist – it was weak and fluttery, but present.  He was still alive.</p>
<p>He wasn’t going to stay that way for long, though.  One of Clint’s arrows had hit him in the leg, and he’d tried to pull it out himself.  All he’d done was break the shaft, leaving the head lodged inside him, and his jeans were stiff with blood.  He needed an ambulance, immediately.</p>
<p>“Give me your shirt,” she told Clint.  He pulled it over his head and gave it to her, and she wound it around the man’s upper thigh for a tourniquet.  “Somebody get his mask off,” she added.  Restricting the victim’s breathing would only cut his life even shorter.</p>
<p>Allen hesitated, then stepped back, holding his hands up.  Instead, it was Sir Stephen who bent down and pulled the gas mask off, revealing the pale, sweaty face underneath.</p>
<p>The man was breathing hard.  His eyes were barely open, but Nat could see that they were blue.  He had short brown hair and a dimpled chin, and she recognized him right away.  It was Jim Barnes, the reporter from New York.</p>
<p>That couldn’t be right, though… Barnes had been wearing a <em>blue</em> jacket with duct tape on the left sleeve.  Nat looked around and spotted it, lying not far away.  There was ash inside it, like the clothes that had fallen out of Allen’s hands.  So who was <em>this</em> guy?  A twin?</p>
<p>“Hey.”  She patted the man’s face.  “Barnes.  Or whoever you are.  Wake up!”</p>
<p>The man took a long, shuddering breath – and then he simply <em>dissolved</em>.  Before Natasha’s astonished eyes he crumbled away, and all that was left was a smear of ash on the ground where his head had lain.  When Nat looked at the tourniquet she’d made, it, too, was stained with ash, as were the empty jeans… but there wasn’t a trace of blood.</p>
<p>Sir Stephen dropped to his knees and made the sign of the cross.  His own face was nearly as pale as Barnes’ had been.  “By our Lady, and all the Saints!” he whispered.</p>
<p>“The guy at the truck did the same thing,” said Nat.  She looked up at Allen, who nodded.</p>
<p>“No,” said Sir Stephen, “it’s not that, or not that alone… do you know who that man was?”</p>
<p>“He said he was a reporter,” Nat replied, “but I don’t think it was the same guy.”</p>
<p>Sir Stephen shook his head.  “That was my friend, Buckeye.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>It wasn’t until the next afternoon, after they’d all been interviewed by the Gendarmerie and put up at a St. Christopher’s Inn on the Paris Canal, that the members of the CAAP were really able to talk about the incident amongst themselves.  With the French police looking into the heist, the Committee’s involvement seemed to be over – whatever had just happened was certainly perilous, but it didn’t seem very archaeological.  Despite that, they weren’t going home just yet.  Everybody needed a few days to recover, especially Sir Stephen.</p>
<p>They gathered in the hotel bar.  It was a bright, cheerful space with wooden floors, orange benches, and big windows, all very unsuited to the general feeling of melancholy.  When Nat came in, Sir Stephen was already sitting morosely at a table, gazing into a glass of St. Remy.  Sharon was next to him, her hand on his arm so he wouldn’t feel too alone.</p>
<p>Silently, the rest sat down one by one.  Natasha remembered Sir Stephen having said he ‘didn’t suffer for drink’, and Sam had suggested that his body, which was capable of healing at impossible speeds, also metabolized alcohol faster than he could consume it.  In order to get drunk Sir Stephen might have to chug the whole bottle… and he looked like he was thinking about it.</p>
<p>“How’s your head?” Allen asked Nat anxiously.</p>
<p>“Three stitches,” she replied.  “I’ll be fine.”</p>
<p>“Oh, good.”  He nodded.</p>
<p>There was silence for a few long, miserable moments.  People in the bar around them were laughing, talking, eating and drinking, and there was a French pop song playing.  It all seemed to be happening miles away.</p>
<p>“Of course, I know it cannot have been Buckeye,” Sir Stephen said.</p>
<p>“I guess not,” said Nat, relieved that he wasn’t going to insist on that identification.  “Even if he survived the fall you told us about, Buckeye would have died a long time ago.”</p>
<p>“I know.”  Sir Stephen downed his St. Remy, and then poured himself another glass.  “Yet there is another part of me that says, <em>I am here</em>.  I am here, after a thousand years.  Why should Buckeye not be as well?”</p>
<p>“You’re here by a one-in-a-billion bit of magic,” said Sharon gently.  She rubbed his shoulder.</p>
<p>“I know,” he repeated with a sigh.  “The resemblance was uncanny, and yet it cannot be but a coincidence.”</p>
<p>“Like all those deaths around the mummy,” Natasha said thoughtfully.</p>
<p>“Indeed,” said Sir Stephen.  “The mummy which is now vanished.  Perhaps we, too, have fallen victim to its curse.”</p>
<p>“No.  We were victims of a robbery,” said Nat.  “The curse has a very specific pattern: people who <em>own</em> the mummy die early and unfortunate deaths.  We didn’t own it, and we’re not dead.”</p>
<p>Sir Stephen reached to pour himself another drink, but Sharon intercepted the bottle and passed it to Sam at the other end of the table.  “Stop that,” she told Sir Stephen.</p>
<p>“It does me no harm,” he protested.</p>
<p>“It doesn’t do you any <em>good</em>, either,” she countered.  “And if it’s not doing anything for you one way or the other, and you’re not enjoying the taste which you are clearly not, then there’s no point in drinking it.”</p>
<p>“Did Buckeye have a brother?” asked Nat.  It probably wasn’t relevant, but she was curious.</p>
<p>“He did not.”  Sir Stephen looked at her with a puzzled frown.  “At least, not one who lived to adulthood, not that he ever told me.  Why do you ask?”</p>
<p>“Because Dad and I talked to this guy on the train,” Natasha explained.  “He looked <em>exactly</em> like the body we found… I thought for a moment it had to be the same person.  He said his name was Jim Barnes, and he seemed totally genuine at first.  I didn’t pick up any of the usual warning signs, but he turned out to be in on it…”</p>
<p>“Buckeye’s Christian name was James,” Sir Stephen interrupted.</p>
<p>He’d tried to hide the note of hope in his voice, but Nat heard it anyway and felt bad for inspiring it – and for having to crush it again.  “It’s a very common name,” she pointed out.  “Thing is, I can’t figure out how Barnes could be the same person as the man we found by the tracks.  He was wearing a specific jacket that he’d fixed with tape, and <em>that</em> was lying a dozen feet away with nobody in it.  They had to be two different people, unless they just stopped and swapped clothes in the middle of the fight.”</p>
<p>“Twins, maybe,” said Sam.  “Or like that <em>Sherlock Holmes</em> movie where Moriarty did plastic surgery to make them <em>look</em> like twins.”</p>
<p>“Maybe,” said Nat, doubtfully.  “Maybe something else.  I mean… identical guys who just melt away when you kill them?  That definitely sounds like some kind of magic to me.”  She looked at Sharon, who nodded.  Both of them remembered the unfortunate man on Flotta.</p>
<p>“I hope not,” Sharon said, shivering.  “Once was enough!”</p>
<p>There was another silence.  Once again, it was Sir Stephen who broke it.</p>
<p>“When I brought Buckeye out of the Red Death’s cavern on the beach, he told me I needn’t have come back for him,” he said softly.  “He told me that the coming battle against William of Normandy was far more important than the lives of a few soldiers, and I should have taken the Lady’s gift and gone to do my duty to my king.  I relied that I could not <em>fail</em> to come for him, I owed him my life so many times over.”</p>
<p>His shoulders heaved as he sighed.  “When I could not walk, Buckeye carried me.  When the other children called me a bastard and made fun of my weakness, I would try to defend myself – in the state I was in then, I was never able, but I tried nevertheless, and always I would be beaten.  Buckeye came to my rescue.  And when my mother died and I was made to leave Rogsey Abbey I feared I would end up begging for alms, but Buckeye took me in and gave me honest work.”</p>
<p>Sir Stephen looked at the bottle of St Remy.  Sam took it, got up, and went to put it back on the bar.</p>
<p>“I had nothing to give him in return.  I was penniless, tiny, and sickly.  I could not pay him in money, in truck, or in service – and yet again and again, he helped me.  He made enemies of boys larger than himself and yet he fought them.  As we grew into men it was a scandal that he spent so much time around the nuns and he cared not.  For years of my life I had nothing but Buckeye, and in the end, I failed him.”  He hung his head.</p>
<p>“You didn’t fail him,” said Sharon, running a hand up and down Sir Stephen’s arm.  “He chose to follow you because he loved you.”</p>
<p>“That is what Lady Margaret said,” Sir Stephen agreed.  “That Buckeye chose to die for me, and that rather than blame myself I should celebrate his courage and go on in his name.  And so I did, but his terrified face as he fell still haunts me, and now to see it again in such a way…” he shivered.</p>
<p>Sharon leaned her cheek against his shoulder.  “It’ll be okay,” she whispered.  “There was nothing you could do then, and there’s nothing you can do now.”</p>
<p>“I know,” said Sir Stephen quietly.  “I know.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>Sir Stephen wasn’t the only one who’d found the shock particularly nasty.  Natasha may not have seen the truck driver disappear, but she’d definitely witnessed Allen’s reaction to it, and had noticed how he refused to help with the one who looked like Barnes for fear it would happen again.  So later in the afternoon, while Sam and Clint visited an arcade and Sharon took Sir Stephen to the Louvre to try to distract him, Nat took a cup of coffee up to their room for Allen.</p>
<p>He had been gazing mindlessly out the window, watching the boats on the canal.  Nat set the cup down on the sill and stood on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek – it was still something she had to <em>decide</em> to do and then make herself, feeling more like part of an undercover identity than something she would do naturally.  But she was <em>trying</em>, and she supposed that was important.</p>
<p>“I know Sir Steve’s upset,” she said.  “How are <em>you</em>?”</p>
<p>Allen shrugged.  “It’s like he said, I just keep seeing it, the way he fell apart.  I wonder if <em>I’ll</em> do that when I die.”</p>
<p>That thought hadn’t occurred to Nat.  Allen wasn’t <em>quite</em> a real person.  He was something she’d constructed by accident.  He <em>felt</em> like flesh and blood.  He ate and slept and remembered an entire lifetime that had never happened.  He hadn’t vanished when they’d shut the Grail down, so it didn’t seem likely that he would just disintegrate when he died… but when Barnes had touched her hand, Nat hadn’t noticed anything odd about <em>him</em>, either.  Was there any way to know?</p>
<p>Maybe there was.  “The blood on the cloth vanished when the rest of him did,” she said.  “You bleed and it hangs around.  I’ve seen it.”</p>
<p>At that, Allen actually managed a small smile.  “That kind of helps, actually,” he said, and turned to look out the window again.  “Have you been to Paris before?”</p>
<p>Half a dozen horrible memories flashed through Nat’s head as she sat down on the bed.  “Yeah.”</p>
<p>He glanced over his shoulder.  “Doesn’t sound like it was a fun time.”</p>
<p>“Not really,” she said.  She’d killed two people and then hid in a catacomb, under a pile of human skeletons, for nearly thirty hours.  At the time it had just been a day.  The longer it had been, and the more she interacted with normal people, the worse the memory became.</p>
<p>He cocked his head – the same way she did when she was curious or confused.  “Do you want to talk about it?”</p>
<p>“No,” she replied immediately.  That was very much on her list of things Allen didn’t need to be troubled with.  “What I want to do is find a library.”</p>
<p>“Research on the mummy?” he asked.</p>
<p>“No,” said Nat, “research on true crime.  I want to know if anything like this ever happened before, and if it did, what was the motive and where did the loot end up.”  She went to the closet for her jacket.  “Come on.”</p>
<p>A quick search online turned up a library just a couple of blocks to the southeast.  It was called, appropriately enough, the Bibliothèque Crimée, and was located in a bright modern building with blue and white tiled walls and a rainbow-painted railing at the sidewalk.  Nat settled down with her laptop, and she and Allen began going through the microfiche catalogue looking up art heists.</p>
<p>Over the course of the afternoon and early evening they dug up stories about thefts in France, the UK, the Netherlands, and the Americans – and not one of them was anything like what had happened to the mummy.  Art thieves took small things, easily transported and hidden, and works that were not too famous, so they could be sold without word getting around.  The sarcophagus of Sitamun was the exact opposite of a good target: huge, unwieldy, and instantly recognizable.</p>
<p>“What are you thinking?” Allen asked, as Nat sat frowning at her laptop screen.</p>
<p>“I’m thinking… it had to be a heist for hire,” she replied, as her eyes flickered over an article from that day’s <em>Le Parisien</em>, describing the theft of the mummy.  “Somebody out there specifically wanted it and hired Barnes and his brother, or whoever they were, to go get it.  The question is, what do they want it <em>for</em>?  The sarcophagus is valuable, sure, but they can’t sell it or show it off for fear of being reported.”</p>
<p>“Maybe it’s a very complicated murder attempt,” Allen suggested.  “Maybe they’re going to give it to someone they secretly hate and see if the curse works.”</p>
<p>Natasha giggled.  “Now, <em>there’s</em> a plot for a heist movie!” she said.</p>
<p>“Or maybe it’s something in this.”  Allen poked the newspaper’s photograph of the sarcophagus, indicating the inscriptions.  “Maybe there’s some special magic or something in there?  They want to learn how the curse works and use it themselves?”</p>
<p>Nat’s skeptical mind hadn’t thought of that, and she wanted to dismiss it – but that was no longer the world they lived in.  They had to consider every possibility, even, or perhaps <em>especially</em>, the ones that seemed absurd.  “The hieroglyphs have probably been translated,” she said.  “The museum had it for ages, so they must have let people study it.”  She wasn’t going to trust to a translation she found on a website, so she emailed the curator of antiquities at the Victoria and Albert to ask.</p>
<p>Much later, when they were back at the hotel, Natasha’s phone dinged to tell her that she had a reply.  The contents, however, were disappointing.  All that was written on the massive sarcophagus was the usual list of Princess Sitamun’s titles, her relationships to various other members of the royal family, and some standard blessings for the afterlife.  There was no hint of a curse, or of anything unexpected at all.  Nat finished reading it for the second time, then set her phone on the bottom bunk next to her and flopped back onto the mattress.</p>
<p>“No good?” Allen guessed.</p>
<p>“<em>Nothing</em>,” said Natasha.  “What the hell did anybody want with that mummy badly enough to pull such a dramatic stunt?”</p>
<p>“Maybe just the thrill of the chase,” said Allen.</p>
<p>“It’s almost looking that way,” she sighed.  The alternative, that somebody was planning to break up the sarcophagus to sell the gold and gems, didn’t bear thinking about.  “The thing about Barnes is still bothering me, too.  There are hundreds of guys named James Barnes in the United States, so it’s not like I can track down just one of them easily.  I looked through the <em>Times</em> website and they’ve got two guys by that name on their staff, but neither is a reporter and neither is in Europe right now.”</p>
<p>“So we know he was an impostor, and practically nothing else,” said Allen.  “What’s a shame.”</p>
<p>“Don’t start,” Nat warmed him.</p>
<p>“Start what” he asked innocently.</p>
<p>“Teasing me about almost making a date!”  She looked at him directly and scowled, letting him know she was absolutely serious about this.  “I’m still mad that he tricked me.  I don’t want to hear about it, or about grandchildren, or any of that sort of thing.  You’re not allowed to be <em>that</em> kind of father.  Understand?”</p>
<p>Allen looked startled, but he nodded meekly.  “Yes Ma’am.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>It was very early in the morning on their third day in Paris when Nat was awakened by her mobile phone ringing.  She opened her eyes when the jingle began to play, then buried her face in her pillow and groaned softly.</p>
<p>The tune played for a second time, and from the bunk above she heard Allen’s sleepy voice.  “You gonna get that, Ginger Snap?”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” she grumbled, and reached to grab it from the side table.  Natasha had a very short list of people she would be willing to answer the phone for at this hour, but the caller turned out to be one of them – it was Fury.  She swore under her breath, then pressed the button and put the phone to her ear.</p>
<p>“I hope it’s a reasonable hour where you are,” she said.</p>
<p>“No, I’m still in England,” he replied, “but I figured you needed to know as soon as possible.  They found the mummy.”</p>
<p>Nat was suddenly wide awake.  “They did?  Where?”</p>
<p>From the bunk by the window she heard Clint mutter something indecipherable, followed by, “what kind of stupid time is it?”</p>
<p>“I’m not allowed to tell you outright because they don’t want sightseers gathering,” said Fury, “but since it was stolen by disappearing guys with the same face and all, I asked the Gendarmerie to let you take a look at it, too.  They’re sending a car, so you’d better get dressed.”</p>
<p>“We don’t know what was going on with those guys,” Nat protested, although she was already getting out of bed.  The floors were wood rather than carpet, and very cold on the bare feed.</p>
<p>“Nobody else does either,” said Fury, “but you’ve dealt with stuff like this before.”</p>
<p>“No, we haven’t!”  The Holy Grail had been something completely different… or had it?  Who was she to say?</p>
<p>She wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to learn more, however, so after disconnecting, she reached up to give Allen a shake and then went to knock on the door of the other room.</p>
<p>“Sir Steve!” she shouted.  “Sam!  Sharon!  Wake up?”</p>
<p>“<em>Why</em>?” Clint asked, his voice muffled by the covers pulled over his head.</p>
<p>“They found the mummy,” said Nat.</p>
<p>“So?” he asked.  “It’s four in the morning.  It’s not like she’s getting any deader.”</p>
<p>Fortunately, everybody else was a little more enthusiastic.  They dragged Clint out of bed with the promise of espresso, and there was just enough time for everybody to wash their faces and throw on some deodorant before the Gendarmerie cars pulled up outside the hostel.  The French police looked just as annoyed at having to get up before dawn as the CAAP, and nobody spoke much as they drove out into the countryside for what felt like hours.</p>
<p>It probably <em>was</em> hours, too – by the time they arrived, the sun was coming up.  They pulled over at the side of a country road, just above a steep slope down into a wooded valley.  Through the trees, Nat could just barely see yellow crime scene tape.</p>
<p>“That,” one of the cops said, pointing.  He had a thick accent and managed to imply that this was at least a third of his English.</p>
<p>They had to be very careful climbing down the hill.  The skies over Paris had been clear, but here it had rained overnight, and the autumn grass and fallen leaves were slippery and treacherous.  Clint would have fallen on his face and slid on the whole way if Natasha hadn’t been in time to grab him, and a moment later she had to pass him on to Sir Stephen so that she could take Allen’s hand before <em>he</em> lost his footing on the slick ground.  There were several scrapes and bruises before they finally came to the tape, and ducked under it.</p>
<p>From the top of the hill, the yellow tape had been visible through a break in the trees.  Now that they were up close, Nat could see that it was literally a <em>break</em>: branches had been smashed by something heavy crashing into them.  Something heavy had rolled down the hill, hit the trees, and then shattered on the boulders in the middle of the stream at the bottom.</p>
<p>It was the sarcophagus of Princess Sitamun.</p>
<p>“Oh, <em>no</em>!” Natasha exclaimed.  She hurried forward the last few steps, climbed over a broken tree trunk, and pushed aside a white-suited forensics specialist who tried to stop her.</p>
<p>She had hoped for a moment that it was some trick of light and shadow that made the sarcophagus look broken, but it wasn’t.  The lid had snapped in two and was lying in the gravel on the shoreline, while the body was broken into three large pieces and several tiny ones, leaning on the boulders and strewn across the shallow stream bed.  In the middle of it all, half in and half out of the water, was the mummy itself, broken in pieces and twisted almost beyond recognition as a human corpse.</p>
<p>“<em>Madame!</em>” the specialist said.  “You must not touch!”</p>
<p>Nat drew her hand back.  “<em>Non, pas vraiment</em>,” she agreed.  “<em>Pardonnez-moi</em>.”  The stream had probably already washed away a lot of evidence and her poking around wouldn’t help.  The police had to figure out who had done this terrible thing to such a treasure and punish them for it… but whoever it was, she thought, when she found the guilty parties Natasha would break their necks herself!  The spy in her had been angry yesterday.  Today, the archaeologist was <em>livid</em>.</p>
<p>She must have looked it, too, because as she rejoined the others back at the tape, they all moved away from her – except for Allen, who put an arm around her shoulders to comfort her.</p>
<p>“So somebody took the mummy and the sarcophagus,” he said, “and then just threw it away?  That doesn’t make any sense.”</p>
<p>“No,” Natasha agreed.  “None of this makes sense.”  They had to have missed something important… but what?</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. The Curse of Madame Desrosiers</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Guedelon Castle is a real place.  You can find a really neat six-part documentary about it and medieval daily life by searching for 'Secrets of the Castle' on YouTube.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The forensics people erected a tent over the remains of the sarcophagus to keep it dry as rain began misting down again, and went over it looking for evidence.  Other people were at the top of the hill, searching for footprints or tyre tracks, but although it wasn’t a main highway, the <em>Autoroute</em> here was not a back road either, and such things might easily get lost in the background noise.  Some specialists from the Department of Egyptian Antiquities at the Louvre arrived to remove the mummy, and while the CAAP had very little to do but stand around feeling useless.</p>
<p>It was one of the people from the Louvre who suddenly called for her colleagues to take a look at something.  They moved in closer to see, and Nat once again ducked under the crime scene tape and went to join them.</p>
<p>They had retrieved the mummy’s torso – in two pieces – the upper part of one leg, and the top of the skull.  The rest was either still missing or else unsalvageable.  It was possible to see right inside the torso parts, and spilling out of them was what looked for all the world like wet newspaper.</p>
<p>“Doctor Jones,” the woman from the Louvre said, in her thick French accent.  “This is an English newspaper, is it not?”</p>
<p>“I think so.”  Nat leaned in for a closer look, careful this time not to touch anything.  The print was tiny and in narrow columns, with no pictures, and the paper was brittle and cracked, and dissolving away when the rain hit it.  It was not yellowed, however, which suggested it had not been exposed to the sunlight.  Part of a torn page was peeking out, which showed a logo of a long-necked bird with a branch in its mouth, sitting on a caduceus above a banner reading <em>Libertas</em>, followed by the beginning of a gothic capital letter.  The rest was invisible inside the mummy.</p>
<p>As the others gathered around her, Natasha pulled out her hone hoping to google the logo, but found there was no signal.  Allen, however, looked over her shoulder and immediately said, “that’s the <em>Liverpool Mercury</em>.”</p>
<p>“It is?” asked Natasha, startled.</p>
<p>“I did some wiring repairs in an archive in Blackpool, where they had a bunch of historical newspapers framed on the walls,” he explained.  “I think they said it stopped publishing in 1909.”</p>
<p>“Well, this looks like it’s been inside that mummy at <em>least</em> that long,” said Nat.  The Victorians had done some strange things to mummies, including grinding them up and using them as medicine.  Stuffing one with newspaper didn’t seem too odd relative to that, but Natasha couldn’t help wondering if the paper had another purpose besides filling space.  “Do you know if anyone ever x-rayed this mummy?” she asked the woman from the Louvre.</p>
<p>“I do not believe so,” she said.  “It was very decayed and they did not want to risk more damage.”</p>
<p>“Meaning <em>anything</em> could have been hidden in there,” Nat mused.</p>
<p>One of the Gendarmes peered over Nat’s shoulder.  “Do you think it’s magic?” he asked.</p>
<p>“This is not magic,” Sir Stephen told him.  “This is merely disrespect for the dead.”</p>
<p>Sir Stephen was probably the only one of them qualified to recognize magic when he saw it, so Natasha nodded.  The destruction of the mummy and sarcophagus wasn’t magical at all.  Nothing had happened here that couldn’t be done by ordinary human beings pushing the sarcophagus out of the back of a truck.  The question was <em>why</em> they would do such a thing.  “Maybe it was an accident,” she said.  “Maybe they were transporting it and it fell, and they decided to just cut and run.”  That wasn’t very <em>likely</em>, she thought, but it did seem <em>possible</em>.</p>
<p>“I don’t like accidents,” said Sharon.  “In my line of work, it’s never an accident.”</p>
<p>Nat nodded.  “What else is in there, besides the newspaper?” she asked.</p>
<p>The woman from the Louvre shrugged.  “We will look when we have the remains properly stabilized,” she said.</p>
<p>Natasha had a sneaking suspicion that if there’d ever been anything in there, it was gone now.  That was an angle she hadn’t considered before, but now that she did, it made a little more sense of the situation.  The thieves didn’t want the mummy itself, they wanted something <em>inside</em> it.  Something that <em>could</em> be moved around or sold, because nobody else knew about it.  But what could it be that was so insanely valuable that they’d be willing to destroy the mummy and sarcophagus to get it?</p>
<p>Once the people from the Louvre had packed up what was left of the mummy, and a crane had arrived to drag the pieces of the sarcophagus back up the hill, the CAAP returned to their cars and were taken back to Paris on another long drive.  The slight rain continued, making droplets that sat on the windows but never got big enough to trickle down.  Sir Stephen stared past them at the landscape rolling by, his expression thoughtful.</p>
<p>When they arrived back at the St. Christopher’s Inn, they got another surprise.  Fury was in the bar, waiting for them.</p>
<p>“When did you get here?” Clint asked.</p>
<p>“I flew in while you were out at the site,” Fury replied.  “I’ve got somebody I think you want to talk to – somebody who didn’t tell us something he really <em>should</em> have.”  He nodded to the person sitting beside him.  This was an elderly, balding white man, so thin and sunken-eyed that he almost looked like a mummy, himself.  He nervously adjusted his tie, and gave the group a watery smile.</p>
<p>“Can we at least eat?” Clint asked.  “It’s after lunch time and we didn’t even get breakfast.”</p>
<p>Fury seemed impatient, but he let them order some food, and then introduced his guest.  “This is Sir Bertram Wainfleet, Curator of Antiquities at the Victoria and Albert Museum.”</p>
<p>Natasha recognized the name at once.  “I got your email about the sarcophagus inscriptions,” she said.  “Thank you for your prompt response.”</p>
<p>“You’re welcome,” Wainfleet replied, still visibly uncomfortable.  “I’m afraid I neglected some important information.”</p>
<p>“So we’ve been told,” Sir Stephen said.  “What sort of information, pray tell?”</p>
<p>Wainfleet’s tie could stand no more meddling, so he turned instead to fiddling with his cufflinks.  “I suppose you’ve heard that the Egyptians are blaming us for the theft.  There’s some kind of absurd conspiracy theory going around that we intentionally sabotaged the move because we would rather destroy the sarcophagus than return it.  That’s not true.  The truth is, we were tired of dealing with the bloody thing.”</p>
<p>“Are you referring to the curse?” asked Sir Stephen.</p>
<p>“Oh, yes!”  Wainfleet laughed bitterly.  “The mummy comes with a <em>terrible</em> curse, in the form of Madame Helene Desrosiers!”</p>
<p>That name was also familiar, but this time it took Nat a moment to figure out why.  Instead, Sharon spoke first.  “A relative of Nicolas Desrosiers?” she guessed, referring to the Frenchman who’d brought the sarcophagus and mummy to England.</p>
<p>“Yes,” said Wainfleet, relieved that they understood.  “She’s been trying to assert her family’s claim to the sarcophagus for twenty years, picking up from her mother-in-law before her, and kept threatening to take us to court.  If we gave it to <em>her</em> she’d probably shut it up somewhere in her private collection and nobody would ever see it again.  We didn’t want that.  <em>I</em> couldn’t have that!</p>
<p>“You must have seen pictures of the sarcophagus, right?”  He looked around at the group.  “It’s a magnificent thing!  It deserves to be <em>seen</em>.”  The cufflinks clinked against the edge of the bar as he played with them.  “So we decided to send it back to Egypt as a gesture of apology for all the treasure hunting our colonialist ancestors did.  I spoke to Dr. Hawass myself, and he assured me that once restored it would have pride of place in the museum in Cairo, to be enjoyed by the world!”</p>
<p>Natasha’s opinion of Wainfleet had been steadily declining as he told this story, and as he finished, she pinched the bridge of her nose and groaned.  “And Madame Desrosiers can’t possibly sue <em>them</em> to get it back, because her claim to it is <em>we had it first</em>,” she said.  “You sent it back to Egypt so that <em>she</em> couldn’t have it.”</p>
<p>“It sounds terribly <em>mean</em> when you put it that way,” Wainfleet complained.  “We sent it back to Egypt so it could have the audience it deserves.”</p>
<p>The whole situation was now infuriatingly clear.  “Have you told the Gendarmerie investigating the theft?” Nat asked.</p>
<p>“No,” he admitted.  “We – the museum directors and I – agreed to keep it a secret because we didn’t want to seem like petty bastards.”</p>
<p>“Congratulations,” Nat said.  “Now you sound like petty <em>lying</em> bastards.”</p>
<p>Allen stared at her, horrified by her rudeness, while Sam snickered behind his hand.</p>
<p>“Where does this Madame Desrosiers live?” Sir Stephen wanted to know.</p>
<p>“In Narbonne, I believe,” Wainfleet replied, “although she spends a great deal of time in Guedelon.  She’s an authority on the Middle Ages and she’s been working with the castle project there.  That was where she was when she rang up to shout at me for sending the sarcophagus away.”</p>
<p>Natasha wondered how Wainfleet had worded things when talking to Madame Desrosiers.  She couldn’t quite picture him telling her they were giving the mummy to ‘its <em>original</em> original owners,’ but that was definitely the gist.  “When did she call you?” she asked.</p>
<p>“The day the move was in the press,” said Wainfleet.  “The day the train departed.”  They’d kept the move a secret before then, worried about public outcry.</p>
<p>“Then she might still be there,” Sharon said, pulling out her phone.  “Do you have her number?”  She glanced at Nat, and Nat nodded – if Madame Desrosiers were behind the theft, then she must also be behind the disappearing thieves. </p>
<p>Wainfleet gave them the telephone number, and everybody sat silently, almost holding their breath, while Sharon dialed it and then waited.  There were other people in the bar, and the background chatter of people and clink of glass and metal drowned out the soft sound of the phone ringing, but Natasha almost imagined she could hear it anyway.  Certainly enough time passed for an awful lot of rings with no answer, so it wasn’t much of a surprise when Sharon finally pressed the disconnect.</p>
<p>“She hasn’t set up her voicemail,” she said.</p>
<p>“Then I guess we have to go to Guedelon and see her ourselves,” said Nat firmly.  That was a thing she’d occasionally had to do with the department head at Dundee – he could avoid her phone calls and emails, but when Natasha actually approached him, especially in public with other people watching, it was much harder to escape.</p>
<p>“Where is Guedelon?” asked Allen.</p>
<p>“Yeah, I’ve never heard of it,” Sam said.</p>
<p>“Near Treigny,” Nat replied, “about two and a half hours south of here.  It’s a sort of archaeological experiment.  From what I’ve read, a guy bought some land in central France and found out it included the remains of a castle.  He asked some archaeologists whether he could restore the place as a tourist attraction, and they took a look and told him that it would probably be cheaper to just build a new castle, so he did.”</p>
<p>“Challenge accepted,” said Clint, amused.</p>
<p>Nat had not been personally involved in Guedelon Castle in any capacity, but she’d always thought it would be a fascinating place to visit.  Now, just to make today that much more annoying, she finally had an opportunity to go, and she would probably never have a chance to <em>see</em> anything.</p>
<p>They set out after finishing their lunch, heading south on the A6.  The most direct route passed through toll gates, but Fury had told them the government would cover the bill, so they made no detours and collected receipts.  The rain had stopped now, and while the pavement was still damp and shiny, the sun came out to light up the pasturelands and set off the colours of the autumn foliage.  It would have been a nice drive, if any of them had been in the mood to enjoy it.</p>
<p>“What if this Madame Desrosiers <em>didn’t</em> take the mummy?” Allen asked.</p>
<p>“We don’t know for sure that she did,” Sharon replied, “but she’s definitely the first person we’ve heard about who has a good motive.”</p>
<p>“It just seems to me that if she wanted it for her collection, she wouldn’t take it only to throw it down a hill,” Allen said</p>
<p>“Unless she’s <em>also </em>a petty bastard and didn’t want the museum taking it <em>back</em>,” Clint noted.</p>
<p>“I <em>hope</em> that’s not what’s going on here,” said Nat.  “That would just be sad.”  Allen had a point, though, unless the destruction of the sarcophagus really <em>had</em> been an accident.  “If there <em>was</em> something inside the mummy with the newspapers, maybe she wanted that, not the sarcophagus itself.  It’s just hard to imagine what could be <em>that</em> valuable or important, though, that it would be worth destroying a cultural artifact to get it.”</p>
<p>“I care not for the mummy nor for anything inside it,” said Sir Stephen grimly.  “I want to know what happened to the men who looked like Buckeye.”</p>
<p>“That does seem a little more up our alley,” Sharon said.</p>
<p>Nat wasn’t so sure, herself.  Between the theft, a hidden object that may or may not exist, and the vanishing men, there seemed to be several mysteries going on here at once.  Their bailiwick was ‘archaeological peril’.  There was definitely peril here, and there was definitely archaeology, but it was a little harder to say just how, or indeed <em>whether</em>, the two were related.</p><hr/>
<p>It was a bit after dinnertime when they reached Guedelon.  Their rented vehicle pulled into an ordinary-looking car park, separated from the building site by a row of trees.  A dirt path led around to the other side of those, and there, very intentionally like something out of another time, was the castle itself.  Construction had been going on for some fifteen years now and was expected to take ten more, with all of the world being done in the same way as it would have in the thirteenth century – right down to the workers dressing in period-appropriate clothing.  The only visible concessions to modernity were the hard hats and steel-toed boots required by the safety laws, and a couple of cars and trailers that must have belonged to employees, parked a short distance away.</p>
<p>Natasha had been looking forward to seeing how Sir Stephen would react to the place, and how close he thought it was to the fantasy middle ages he came from.  It was, however, <em>Clint</em> whose eyes lit up eagerly as they approached the stone walls.</p>
<p>“I remember seeing repairs being made to the castle in Nottingham!” he said, referring to his other life as Robin Hood.  “It was just like this, with the treadwheel crane and the mason’s lodge… I recognize all of this!”  He laughed.  “It’s weird how this stuff pops up so strongly when something reminds me.  Like a childhood memory I’ve almost forgotten, and then It comes back.”</p>
<p>His delight was infectious.  Natasha smiled back at him.  “Are you still working on your book?” she asked.</p>
<p>“Uh… not really,” he admitted.  “Not since I got back.  It would feel like cheating now, like the whole story is already written for me.”</p>
<p>“You’re still the one who came up with it,” Nat assured him.</p>
<p>Sir Stephen looked up at the crane, which was lifting blocks of sandstone up to the top of the great tower, powered by two men in what looked like a giant wooden hamster wheel.  He nodded, as if he approved, then lowered his gaze to look at the woman who was coming to greet them.  She was small and plump, dressed in a shapeless forest-green dress and a wimple.</p>
<p>“<em>Can I help you</em>?” she asked sharply in French.  “<em>We’re closed to visitors</em>.”</p>
<p>Natasha checked her watch and realized it was almost six-thirty.  They would probably be stopping work for the night soon.  She would have apologized, but Sir Stephen spoke first.</p>
<p>He bowed to the woman as if she were a great lady, and then took out his CAAP badge.  “<em>Madame, I am Sir Stephen of Rogsey</em>,” he said, in perfect French.  “<em>We are the Committee for the Appraisal of Archaeological Peril from London.  My colleagues and I seek an audience with Madame Helene Desrosiers</em>.”</p>
<p>“Oh,” said the woman, a bit startled by his grandiose politeness.  “<em>I’m Dr. Lefevre, the site director.  What do you want with Madame Desrosiers</em>?”</p>
<p>“<em>We have some questions for her about the stolen Egyptian mummy.  We understand she had a family interest in it</em>,” Sir Stephen explained.</p>
<p>Lefevre looked worried.  “<em>Madame Desrosiers said she would be leaving tonight.  Her trailer is over there</em>.”</p>
<p>They followed her pointing finger towards the small cluster of employees’ vehicles – and heard an engine start.  At the end of the row was a particularly large and expensive-looking RV, which was now humming as it prepared to drive away.</p>
<p>Nat grabbed Sir Stephens’ hand.  “Quick!” she said.</p>
<p>They ran up to the vehicles, where they were in time to see a woman lugging what must have been a very heavy suitcase up the steps to the RV door with her teeth gritted.  To Nat’s surprise, she was not European but East Asian, with fair skin and sleek black hair in a neat bun at the back of her head.  She remembered Wainfleet mentioning that Madame Desrosiers had taken over the attempt to reclaim the mummy from her mother-in-law, and wondered what <em>Monsieur</em> Desrosiers thought about the whole thing.  Maybe his opinion didn’t matter.</p>
<p>“Madame Desrosiers!” Natasha called out.</p>
<p>The woman looked up.  “I am in a hurry!” she said.  Her accent was French, meaning she’d probably grown up in the country, most likely in Paris or its suburbs, to judge by her open vowels.  “I cannot talk!”</p>
<p>“Are you going to visit your Mummy?” asked Sam, apparently unable to resist.</p>
<p>Helene Desrosiers glared at him.  “I am going to see Monsieur Wainfleet,” she snarled, “to give him a piece of my mind about his little stunt!  That mummy belongs to <em>me</em>.”</p>
<p>Nat came closer.  “So nobody’s told you they found it?” she asked.</p>
<p><em>That</em> made Desrosiers stop cold.  She searched Nat’s face for a moment, perhaps looking for a sign that she was lying.  “Where?” she demanded.</p>
<p>“At the side of the road, smashed,” said Nat.  She hadn’t had time to look at a newspaper that day, but was guessing the Gendarmerie hadn’t told the press.  Possibly because they hoped to keep the information private in order to test any tips or confessions they received – but just as likely because they wanted to avoid embarrassment.</p>
<p>Desrosiers stared a moment longer, then muttered something under her breath.  Nat couldn’t quite make out what the word <em>was</em>, but it sounded German.</p>
<p>“What did you say?” asked Nat.</p>
<p>“I know who did this,” Desrosiers declared, “and I will deal with him.  You English,” she added, “your job was to protect the mummy and you have clearly failed at that, so <em>you</em> are no longer needed.”  She hauled her suitcase up the last step.  “Laurent!” she called to somebody else.  “<em>Allons-y</em>!”</p>
<p>“<em>Oui, Madame</em>!” came the reply from up front.</p>
<p>Desrosiers went to shut the door, but Sir Stephen put his hand in it to stop her.  “Who are the men who look like Buckeye?” he demanded.</p>
<p>“The men who… who?” she asked, blinking at him in confusion.</p>
<p>“The identical men!” Sir Stephen insisted.  “There were two of them at least in the party that robbed the train, and they turned to ash when their faces were shown.”</p>
<p>Nat saw a moment of recognition flit across Desrosiers’ features, settling a moment later into annoyance.  “Of course there were,” she said.  “That is not your business, either.”  She slammed the door on Sir Stephen’s fingers, forcing him to yank his hand back.  It would take more than that to stop him, though – still shaking his fingers to get rid of the sting, he ran to stand in front of the vehicle as it trundled down the dirt track between the mason’s lodge and the castle moat.  The driver, a man in his early twenties with the sides of his head shaved, looked nervous for a moment, but then he revved up the engine and Sir Stephen was forced to hurry aside.</p>
<p>“She knows!”  Sir Stephen pointed a furious finger at the RV.  “She knows and she will not tell!”</p>
<p>“She doesn’t have to if she doesn’t want to,” Natasha pointed out, jogging to meet him.  “We don’t actually have any authority on the continent.”</p>
<p>“We cannot go home without answers!” Sir Stephen declared.  “I will not allow it!”</p>
<p>The rest of the group caught up with him, and began to gather around to try to calm him down – but then Clint’s eyes suddenly went wide.  “Hey!” he shouted, taking off to chase the RV.  “Wait!  Hit the brakes!”</p>
<p>Whatever he’d seen, he was too late to stop it.  There was a <em>crack</em> from high up on top of the half-finished great tower, and Natasha looked up in time to see the arm of the wooden crane snap.  The beams swung down to fall into the moat, which fortunately was only a ditch, not yet filled with water, and the load of stones it had been lifting came crashing down on the front of Desrosiers’ RV.</p>
<p>Natasha didn’t hesitate, but immediately ran to help, with the rest of the CAAP right behind her.  Sir Stephen ripped the RV door off its hinges to get at the driver’s seat.  The unfinished stones had gone through the windshield and landed on top of the young man named Laurent, covering him in broken glass and crushing his legs under the collapsed dashboard.</p>
<p>“Don’t touch him!” Natasha ordered.  “You’ll make him worse!  Let the paramedics handle it!”</p>
<p>Sharon shot the lock on the entrance to the living area of the RV, and she and Natasha climbed in.  They found Madame Desrosiers sitting on the floor, just outside of the doorway to the cab, clutching some crumpled papers to her chest and staring in horror at what was in front of her.  Had she been a foot further forward, she would have been killed.</p>
<p>“Are you hurt?” asked Sharon.</p>
<p>“I don’t think so,” said Desrosiers.</p>
<p>“Then come with us.”  Nat took one of the Desrosiers’ arms and Sharon took the other, and they escorted her out to sit down on a larger boulder that had been left at the side of the road by the builders, in order to serve as a bench.</p>
<p>People were now gathering from all over the castle grounds to see what had happened.  Allen was trying to comfort Dr. Lefevre with one arm around her shoulders, while she buried her face in this stranger’s shirt so she wouldn’t have to look at the accident.  With his other hand, Allen was trying to make a phone call.</p>
<p>“I remembered it’s nine-nine-nine this time, but I’m getting an error!” he told Natasha.</p>
<p>“In Europe it’s one-one-two,” she said.</p>
<p>Sam, who had been trained as a doctor to humans before he began working with birds, pushed Sir Stephen out of the way and took Laurent’s pulse, but then stepped back, his head low.  “This one’s dead,” he said quietly.  “How’s Madame Desrosiers?”</p>
<p>“I’m perfectly all right,” Desrosiers replied stiffly.  “I have to leave.  I’m going to miss my flight.”</p>
<p>“Your driver is <em>dead</em>,” said Sharon, appalled.</p>
<p>“And I’m upset about it!” Desrosiers snapped, “but I do not have time for this!”</p>
<p>“Sir Steve,” said Sam, “can you help me with… Sir Steve?”  He looked around.  “Where did he go?”</p>
<p>“He went with Clint,” said Allen.  He briefly waved his phone in the direction of the castle, then put it back to his ear.  “Hello?” he asked, having at last gotten through the emergency line.  “Hi, do you speak English?”</p>
<p>Nat turned towards the stone walls.  Clint was halfway up the scaffolding, with his bow and arrows on his back, but had paused in his climbing to look down.  Sir Stephen was at first nowhere to be seen, but a moment later there was a fuss halfway down the curtain wall.  A man leaped off to land in a heap and roll down into the moat, with Sir Stephen right behind him.</p>
<p>The first man started to get up, but Clint clung to the scaffold with his legs while he fired one of the taser arrows the young scientists at Shrivenham had made for him.  It hit the man in the back of the shoulder, and he convulsed and fell to the ground.  Clint dropped from the scaffold to go get him.</p>
<p>Sir Stephen had landed on his feet a couple of metres away.  He slid down the slope of the moat to grab the fallen man by the shoulders and drag him to his feet.  It turned out, however, that the victim either recovered quickly or had only been faking being stunned – he rolled over, kicked Sir Stephen in the face, and got up to confront Clint, who was now coming at him from the other side.  Clint pulled out a second stun arrow and made to jab at him, perhaps with the idea that he hadn’t hit the right spot the first time.  The man responded by parrying the arrow with one arm, while the other pulled a knife out of his belt and stabbed Clint in the side with it.</p>
<p>“Barton!” Nat cried out.  She left Madame Desrosiers in Sharon’s care, and dashed towards the fight.</p>
<p>“Shit!” Sam exclaimed, and followed her.</p>
<p>Clint had collapsed to his knees, clutching his wound.  The man who’d jumped from the wall was dressed, like the other workers, in a medieval-style tunic, hose, and hood, with a leather vest that had perhaps blocked the shock from the stun arrow.  A battered yellow hard hat and a pair of safety goggles made it difficult to see his face.  While Sam and Nat were still on their way, Sir Stephen managed to twist the knife out of the man’s hand, and then ripped the hat and goggles off him in a single motion.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. A Miracle at Guedelon</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>If Natasha hadn’t already been sure that the mystery man would turn out to be another Barnes, Sir Stephen’s reaction confirmed it for her – he stopped dead, the colour draining from his face even though it couldn’t have been that much of a surprise to <em>him</em>, either.  That gave the culprit the chance he needed, to pull himself out of Sir Stephen’s grip and run.</p>
<p>But while Sir Stephen wouldn’t harm his old friend, not even a ghost of him, Nat had no such compunctions.  She ran after and did a cartwheel, springing onto her hands to wrap her legs around the man’s neck, and let her momentum keep her going so she slammed his face into the ground.  Before he could get up, she had an arm across his throat and tightened her hold, until he was struggling to breathe.</p>
<p>“Who are you?” she demanded.</p>
<p>He didn’t reply.  The man did look unsettlingly like Jim Barnes from the train, although his hair was a little longer and he had a short beard.  He was gurgling and clawing at his neck as if he didn’t have enough air, but Nat knew better.  She was well aware of exactly how much violence she could apply without actually killing somebody, and his chest was still rising and falling just fine.</p>
<p>“<em>Who are you</em>?” she repeated.  “You’re not Jim Barnes and you’re sure as shit not Sir James Buckeye, so who the hell <em>are</em> you?”</p>
<p>He disintegrated.</p>
<p>Nat had been leaning against him, and nearly tell on her face as his body turned to ash and his empty clothes dropped to the ground.  Allen had to grab her from behind to keep her from toppling over, and for a moment all she could do was stare at the dust on the empty clothes.  <em>Had</em> she killed him?  Had she somehow applied too much pressure?  Had she applied it in the wrong place?  Was she out of practice?  Or could these men – or whoever was controlling them – simply decided it was time to self-destruct?</p>
<p>“You have killed him!” Sir Stephen exclaimed.</p>
<p>“Not on purpose!” Nat protested.</p>
<p>Sir Stephen held up the man’s leather vest and shook it, but only a few flakes of ash fell out.  “You strangled him!” he insisted.</p>
<p>“I did not!” said Nat.  “He could breathe fine, he was just being theatrical!”</p>
<p>“So you say,” Sir Stephen snarled as Sharon and Allen helped her up, “and yet he lies dead at your feet!”  He waved a finger in her face.</p>
<p>She slapped his hand aside.  “He is <em>not</em> your friend Buckeye!” Nat shouted back.  “I don’t know who he is but he’s not your friend!”</p>
<p>“Guys!” shouted Sam, bellowing to be heard over both of them.</p>
<p>They stopped arguing and looked in his direction, and everybody remembered Clint.  Sam was now kneeling in the bottom of the moat ditch next to their injured friend, trying to stop him bleeding.  His shirt was already dark with blood, and there was more on the grass around him.  Employees of the castle project were standing around watching, and Nat had to duck under their arms and squeeze past them to get close.</p>
<p>“Can you help him?” she asked.</p>
<p>“Not here,” said Sam.  “He needs to be in a hospital, <em>now</em>.  Did anyone call an ambulance?”</p>
<p>“Madame Lefevre did,” said Allen, “but I don’t know how long it’ll take them to get here.”</p>
<p>Madame Desrosiers shook her head.  “There isn’t time,” she said.  “He will die.”</p>
<p>“Well, aren’t you a ray of sunshine?” Sam grumbled.</p>
<p>“I can help him,” said Desrosiers.  “Bring him here.”</p>
<p>“What are <em>you</em> planning to do?” Sam asked.</p>
<p>“I’ll explain after I’ve saved his life,” she replied.  “Do you want him to die, or don’t you?”</p>
<p>In real fear for Clint’s life, Sam and Sir Stephen picked the man up to carry him out of the moat and back to the remains of Desrosiers’ RV.  Only the cab had really been crushed, but the rest didn’t look too stable either, and Laurent’s body had not yet been removed from the driver’s seat.  Nevertheless, Desrosiers herself climbed the steps and went inside, and directed them to sit Clint down in the bathroom’s tiny shower stall.  Allen grabbed a towel and folded it up to make a pillow for behind his head.</p>
<p>“Let’s see the wound,” said Desrosiers.</p>
<p>She handed Sam a pair of scissors, and he cut Clint’s shirt off to reveal it.  It was deep, with his ribs visible and the membrane between them severed, and fresh blood welled up as Sam examined it.  Clint himself was gray-faced from blood loss, semi-conscious and breathing shallowly.</p>
<p>“Move aside.”  Desrosiers knelt down next to the stall, and moved Clint slightly so he was curled on his side.  Then she opened a small bottle.  This was made of opaque white glass, and was the right size and shape to have once held some kind of liqueur, although it had no label.  Desrosiers tipped it, and a transparent liquid, thick and slightly yellowish like half-set gelatin, oozed out and into the injury.  The substance seemed to linger in the open wound for a moment, then slither further in, as if it were alive and purposeful.</p>
<p>“There.”  Desrosiers capped the bottle again and stood.  “Bandage him up.”</p>
<p>Allen gave Sam a second towel, and Sam began tearing it up to make bandages.  “What’s in that stuff?” he asked Desrosiers.</p>
<p>“That’s my secret,” she replied.</p>
<p>“I’m a doctor,” Sam told her.  “I need to know what sort of substances you’re exposing my patient to.”</p>
<p>Desrosiers was unmoved.  “A substance that will save his life, or at least prolong it until his body can save itself,” she said.  “He was injured trying to stop the assassin sent for me, and I appreciate that, but I can’t tell you anything else.”</p>
<p>The others stayed gathered around the narrow bathroom door, as if they thought their attention was the only thing keeping Clint alive – but Natasha realized she now had an opportunity to look around while nobody was watching her.  She hated to seem like she didn’t care about Clint, but they might never get another chance like this.</p>
<p>While everyone else continued watching or arguing, Nat slowly backed up and began inspecting Desrosiers’ bedroom.  There wasn’t anything immediately unusual about it, but she did notice that there were no framed pictures in it.  That was odd – most people liked to have images of their friends and family around them.  Maybe Desrosiers was the type who kept them all on her phone.</p>
<p>On the dresser were a number of books in various languages, fallen over and bumped out of place by the impact of the stones on the cab.  Some were concerned with medieval architecture and furniture, which Wainfleet had said was Desrosiers’ area of expertise – between that, Egyptology, and medicine, it seemed she was quite the polymath – but others were curious choices.  There was a copy of <em>The Da Vinci Code</em>, and books in English, French, and German on topics as varied as the interpretation of the tarot, the history of science, and a travel guide to the Greek islands.</p>
<p>On the bed, partially hidden by the coverlet, was a computer printout.  Nat gently moved the cloth to see, and found a boarding pass for a flight from Chateauroux to Athens.</p>
<p>“Oh, my god!” Sharon burst out.</p>
<p>Nat quickly put the bedclothes back, and went to stand on her tiptoes so she could look over Sharon’s shoulder at what was happening.  The first thing she saw was Allen and Sir Stephen’s astonished faces… and astonished they well might be, because Clint was sitting up and blinking with the colour back in his face.</p>
<p>“No, don’t move yet,” said Sam, trying to push him back down.</p>
<p>“What happened?” Clint asked hoarsely.</p>
<p>“You were stabbed,” said Sam.</p>
<p>“What, <em>again</em>?”  Clint’s eyes immediately went to Allen Jones.</p>
<p>Allen held up his hands.  “It wasn’t me this time!”</p>
<p>“It doesn’t hurt,” Clint observed.  He felt his way down his chest to his bandaged abdomen, and began unwinding the bloodstained towels.</p>
<p>“Don’t do that!” Sam protested.</p>
<p>But Clint pulled them off anyway – and to everybody’s shock, underneath them was very little evidence of an injury at all.  The blood wiped away easily, leaving only a thin line a little paler than the skin around it, though it did not otherwise resemble a scar.  He was clearly in no more pain, and the effects of the blood loss had vanished.  It had only been a few minutes.</p>
<p>The sound of sirens told Nat that the ambulance had finally arrived.  She glanced out the window, and found Madame Lefevre running up to meet the vehicle.  The driver opened the door to talk to her, and she pointed towards the RV.</p>
<p>“You guys,” Nat said, “I think we should go outside before they come looking for the stabbing victim somebody has probably told them about.”</p>
<p>“Where’s my shirt?” asked Clint, looking around.</p>
<p>It was still lying in a blood-soaked heap in a corner of the bathroom.  Sam unzipped his University of Edinburgh sweatshirt and handed it to Clint.  “Wear this.”</p>
<p>Back outside, somebody offered them coffee, and Natasha calmly told the paramedics that rumors of a stabbing had been greatly exaggerated.  The Gendarmerie and the coroner showed up to take statements about the ‘accident’ and to move Laurent’s body, and while Lefevre and her employees were occupied with that, the CAAP sat Madame Desrosiers down in the castle’s empty and as yet undecorated great hall to get some answers out of her.</p>
<p>Sam turned on the flashlight function on his phone so they’d have some light, and looked at Desrosiers.  “What did you do?” she asked.</p>
<p>“Nothing you need to know more about,” she said.  “It was a favour, to thank you for saving my life, but I need to leave immediately or I’m going to miss my plane.”</p>
<p>“Your driver just died,” Sharon reminded her.  “Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”</p>
<p>“It does,” Desrosiers said.  “I told you, that does upset me, but I don’t have time now to grieve.  There is something I urgently need to do and I can’t do it here.”</p>
<p>“Then you’d better tell us what that stuff was,” said Sam, “because you’re not leaving here until you do.  Don’t say I don’t need to know,” he added, “because I do.  I’m a doctor, and what’s in that bottle will save lives!”</p>
<p>Desrosiers scoffed.  “In this world, half the people who need it would refuse to have it anywhere near them!”</p>
<p>“It’s magic,” said Sir Stephen confidently, “but no magic I know of.”</p>
<p>Natasha was getting tempted to agree, but Desrosiers just heaved a sigh.  “Don’t be silly,” she told him.  “It’s not magic.  It’s the <em>opposite</em> of magic.  Magic is inherently destructive.  It bends nature out of shape, forcing it to do <em>un</em>natural things.  That’s why something has to die to make it happen.  I don’t do that.  I <em>use</em> nature.  I learn its rules and work <em>with</em> it, rather than against it, to produce a desired result.”</p>
<p>It took Natasha a few moments to work through that description and figure out what this woman meant by it.  Sam did the same, and looked boggled by the answer he arrived at.  “That’s <em>science</em>?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Not by your definition, no,” said Desrosiers.  “If you must know, it’s alchemy.”</p>
<p>There was a long, uncomfortable silence.  Natasha thought about the books she’d seen in the trailer – those could well belong to a would-be alchemist.  Then she thought of the mummy, and the apparently urgent trip to Athens that Desrosiers didn’t want anyone to know she was taking.  For the moment, however, she kept those thoughts to themselves.</p>
<p>“You’re an alchemist,” said Sharon skeptically.  “Can you turn lead into gold?”</p>
<p>“I can if I want, but it’s rather dangerous and I prefer not to,” Desrosiers said.  She looked around, as if for an avenue of escape, but Sir Stephen and Sam, the biggest members of the CAAP, were sitting on either side of her and would surely tackle her if she tried to run.  “All right,” she decided.  “I’ve no doubt you have to submit a report to some office or other, so may I have your promise that if I tell you what I did with your friend, you will leave it <em>out</em> of that report?  You came here looking for me, you saved me life, and I left, knowing nothing of the sarcophagus except that I’m furious with your underhanded countrymen and I’m suing the rail company for the value of it.  Will you promise me that?”</p>
<p>Among things the CAAP lacked were procedures, and so none of them knew if they were going to have to submit a report.  It was a good carrot to dangle, though, so Nat nodded.</p>
<p>“Deal,” she said.</p>
<p>The great hall at Guedelon had been plastered on the inside but was not yet furnished or decorated, leaving it a vast, open, echoing space.  Someday the builders planned it would have tapestries on the walls, rushes on the floors, and a great banqueting table, but for now it was completely empty, and lit only by one phone light in the middle of a circle of people, it was downright spooky.  The exposed rafters cast shadows on the ceiling that looked rather like spiderwebs, and their own shadows loomed ominously over them on the walls.  It seemed to Natasha a perfect place for telling horror stories.  What Madame Desrosiers now said would have been perfect material for one.</p>
<p>She held up her white glass bottle.  “We call this <em>elixir</em>.  It’s an artificial organism with no genetic identity of its own.  It takes on the characteristics of cells it is exposed to and emulates them.  It doesn’t live for very long, just a few weeks at most, but that’s long enough for the body to heal itself while the simulated tissue keeps it running in the meantime.  It can’t be used on the brain or spinal cord, since those do not heal, but it can regenerate bone, and for a stabbing or burn it is extremely effective.  Your friend may slough some gray dust when the cells die, but he’ll be all right.”</p>
<p><em>Gray dust</em>, thought Natasha.  She glanced at Sir Stephen, and saw that he’d picked up on that detail as well.</p>
<p>“Could you use it to create a whole man?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Like the one that tried to kill me?” asked Desrosiers.  “Yes, if you have a tissue sample to use as a basis, and if you don’t mind that the homunculus will only live a week or ten days at most.  By then too many of the cells will have died off, and since there is no body to produce new cells to replace them, it cannot survive longer.”</p>
<p>“Who created the assassin, then?” asked Sir Stephen.  “And the thieves who took the mummy?  You said you knew.”</p>
<p>“I do,” Desrosiers agreed, but did not volunteer any more information.  “His homunculi always have the same face.”</p>
<p>“Whose face?” Sir Stephen wanted to know.  “Whose ‘tissue’ does he used to make them?”</p>
<p>It couldn’t be Buckeye’s, Natasha thought.  Sir James Buckeye had been dead for a thousand years, and hadn’t had the help of professional embalmers like Princess Sitamun.  Whatever was left of him, if anything at all, would be in even worse shape than the Egyptian and impossible to get DNA out of.  Never mind the fact that Sir James Buckeye hadn’t even technically ever existed… although Nat supposed that since the Holy Grail had brought Sir Stephen of Rogsey and Count John the Red Death to life, it could have retroactively made Buckeye a real person, as well.  That did not negate the first point, though.</p>
<p>“I have no idea,” said Desrosiers.  “I’ve never thought it mattered.”</p>
<p>“But it does matter!”  Sir Stephen grabbed her by the shoulders.  “You <em>must</em> tell me where to find this other alchemist – I need to speak to him.”</p>
<p>“I <em>must</em> do nothing!” Desrosiers said indignantly.  “Take your hands off me!”  She wiggled away from him and backed up a few steps.  “This is not your problem, and if you know what’s good for you, you won’t interfere.  Alchemists live long lives and we hold very long grudges – that’s enough reason for you to leave us alone.  The man who made those homunculi murdered my husband for that mummy, and a dozen other people besides, and it’s been all I could do to keep him from getting a hold of it.  Now he has, and it is for <em>me</em> to deal with the consequences!”</p>
<p>Nat was about to ask whether the dozen other people were the deaths associated with the mummy in the 19<sup>th</sup> century, thus making both Desrosiers and her mysterious colleague much, much older than the forty or so she looked.  Before she could, though, the shadows swam as the great hall suddenly lit up.  Two or three Gendarmes had arrived to investigate the argument, shining their own flashlights into the dark space.</p>
<p>“<em>Y a-t-il un problème ici</em>?” a female officer asked.</p>
<p>“<em>Non</em>,” said Desrosiers.  “<em>Non pas de tout</em>.”  She glared at the CAAP.  “I was just leaving.”  She scooped up her purse, putting the white glass bottle back into it, and began to walk towards the policewoman.</p>
<p>“Wait!”  Natasha reached for her.  “One more thing!”</p>
<p>“No,” Desrosiers said.</p>
<p>“For the report!” Nat insisted.  “Why is the mummy important?”</p>
<p>Desrosiers paused.  “The mummy is not important at all, really,” she said.  “That’s all you need to know.”</p>
<p>As the CAAP left the great hall, the castle site was closing up for the night.  Somebody had taken away the clothing the vanished homunculus had left behind, and Natasha wondered what they’d thought about it.  Were they going to subject it to any tests?  If what Desrosiers had told them was true, they wouldn’t get any DNA out of it.</p>
<p>The man in charge of the Gendarmes, who had rimless eyeglasses and a bushy white mustache that made him look more like a scholar than a cop, came to see who they were.  Sir Stephen showed his badge.</p>
<p>“We are the Committee for the Appraisal of Archaeological Peril, investigating Madame Desrosiers’ role in the theft of the sarcophagus of Princess Sitamun,” he said.</p>
<p>“Oh, the English ghost-hunters,” the Gendarme said tiredly.  “I heard about you.”  He looked them over.  “Madame Lefevre said one of you was injured in a fight?”</p>
<p>Natasha opened her mouth to say that the woman must have been mistaken, but Sir Stephen spoke first.  “I heal quickly,” he said.  “It is part of the gift I received from the Lady of the Lake.  My injury is already gone.”</p>
<p>“That’s a talent,” the Gendarme sighed.  “I hope you all sleep well.  I know I certainly won’t.”</p>
<p>They reached the car park in time to see a white taxi cab pull up.  Madame Desrosiers gave her suitcase to the driver and climbed in, without looking back at them.</p>
<p>“Have a good flight!” Nat shouted to her.</p>
<p>She did not reply.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Morning found the group back in the hotel bar in Paris for breakfast, filling Fury in on what little they’d managed to learn from Desrosiers – the homunculi, the apparent confirmation that the important thing about the mummy was the object wrapped in newspapers inside it, and her claim that she was going to England when she was in fact going to Athens.  Fury was intrigued, nodding and taking notes.</p>
<p>“Which is all intriguing,” Sharon said, “but this is getting outside our jurisdiction.”</p>
<p>As much as Natasha wanted to know more, Sharon had a point.  They were only barely supposed to be in France.  If Madame Desrosiers had gone to Greece, they had no authority at all to follow her there.</p>
<p>“Not at all,” Fury replied.  “Her Majesty the Queen got you together so that you could investigate threats to the realm from archaeological sources.  This Madame Desrosiers says her friend in Greece is a multiple murderer of UK citizens – you told me she said a dozen of them.   The cases are old  enough that it’s probably fair to call them archaeology.  That makes it our job.  If you can get evidence against these people while they’re still in the EU, we can have them extradited for trial.”</p>
<p>“A guy who murdered people two hundred years ago, and we’re just gonna drag him into the Old Bailey?” asked Sharon.  She was smiling.  The idea evidently amused her.</p>
<p>“Damn right we are,” said Fury.  “If there are immortal assholes wandering around out there, we have to show them that living for centuries doesn’t mean they’re above the law!  Grab your stuff and head for the Charles de Gaulle.  I’ll call ahead and have your boarding passes waiting for you.”</p>
<p>“We’re going to Athens?” asked Clint.  “Just like that?”</p>
<p>“Yes, you are,” said Fury.</p>
<p>“Shit.”  Clint stood up.  “Can I have just half an hour?  I asked Laura if she wanted anything from Paris and she said she’s heard good stuff about Buly Soap, but I got lost the last time I went looking for the place and I haven’t gotten another chance.”</p>
<p>Fury looked at him carefully for a moment, trying to figure out if he were joking.  “Seriously?”</p>
<p>“Very seriously,” Clint said.</p>
<p>“His wife’s pregnant,” Sam put in.</p>
<p>Fury sighed.  “All right, we’ll make a stop on the way.  A <em>quick</em> stop,” he added.  “We’re looking for a murderer and a mummy thief, don’t forget.”</p>
<p>“No, Sir, your Earlness,” said Clint with a smile.</p>
<p>The place that sold Buly Soap was not actually on the way to the airport, so it turned out to be more of a detour than a quick stop, but by the afternoon they had their flight booked and were ready to go.  Fury made sure all the paperwork was in order, and then wished them well at the terminal.</p>
<p>“You’re not coming?” asked Sharon, surprised.</p>
<p>“I’m heading back to London,” Fury replied.  “The people at the Victoria and Albert want a representative of the Committee to help with the PR fallout.”  He thought for a moment.  “You know who left a large body of work on alchemy?”</p>
<p>“Sir Isaac Newton,” said Natasha immediately.</p>
<p>Fury nodded, pleased.  “I figured you’d know,” he said.  “I’ll see if I can dig up some of his stuff and send it to you.  There might be something useful in there.  Let me know when you catch up with Desrosiers.”</p>
<p>Fury went to one gate to catch a flight to Heathrow, while the rest boarded a different plane for the three hour flight to Athens.  As they took their seats, Nat noticed Clint with a hand under his shirt, running his fingers self-consciously over his injury.</p>
<p>“How’s your side?” she asked.</p>
<p>“Doesn’t hurt,” he said.  “It doesn’t even feel weird.  I keep expecting to feel a bit that’s made of plastic or something, but no, it feels totally normal.  I can see what she means when she says people wouldn’t want this done to them,” he added.  “People freak out about vaccines and genetically modified corn… no way they’d like the thought of some organism pretending to be part of them while they heal.  They’d worry it’d take them over and make them into zombies, like some old movie.”</p>
<p>Nat shivered.  “I imagine that’s why she engineered them to die off,” she said.  “So that they <em>won’t</em> invade the whole body.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, that makes me feel way better,” said Clint with a grimace.</p>
<p>“At least I’m not the only person who’s stabbed you anymore,” said Allen Jones, taking a seat in the row behind them.</p>
<p>“No,” Clint said, “but you <em>are</em> still the only one who’s apologized, so you can still feel special.”</p>
<p>“Buckeye would have apologized,” said Sir Stephen, sitting across the aisle, next to Sharon.</p>
<p>“That man wasn’t Buckeye,” Nat reminded him.  “He was some kind of construct.  He wasn’t really anybody.”  It was a little hurtful, really, to think that Barnes flirting with her on the train had just been following some kind of programming, but based on what Desrosiers had told them, that seemed the most likely reason.  The homunculi must have a more complex ‘program’ than something like the Red Death’s stone colossi, but it would still be only that.  No wonder it had taken Barnes a moment to decide where he came from.</p>
<p>“I know,” Sir Stephen said, “but if Buckeye knew that his body, that his image was being used in such a way, he would apologize.  You are a good man, Clint of Barton, and he would not want to see you injured.”</p>
<p>“If I run into him in the afterlife someday, I’ll tell him it’s okay,” Clint promised.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. The Man in Black</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It had been cold and wet in England, and clear but chilly in France.  By the time the plane landed in Athens, Natasha thought she’d prepared herself for it to be warmer, but walking onto the jetway was like walking into sauna.  It was only about twenty degrees Celcius, but there was not a cloud in the sky and the air was thick with Mediterranean moisture.</p>
<p>“How did you like your first aeroplane flight?” Sharon asked Sir Stephen, as they picked u their luggage.  Months earlier, while they’d waited for night to fall in Sherwood Forest, she had pointed out a plane passing over and suggested that Sir Stephen might get to ride in one someday.  Nat suspected it had been on both their minds all day.</p>
<p>“It was something of a disappointment,” Sir Stephen replied.  “The interior is so enclosed and the windows so small, you can barely tell you’re in the air.  I liked the train much better, where I could see the countryside passing by.”</p>
<p>“It’s not for sightseeing,” Sam agreed.  “Just for getting where you’re going.”</p>
<p>“If you’re in a hurry I suppose it’s fine,” Sir Stephen said with a shrug.  “You couldn’t do it for a pilgrimage, certainly.”</p>
<p>“Why not?” Nat asked.  “Thousands of people go by air for pilgrimages every year.  It’s the only way Muslims in some parts of the world can get to Mecca.”</p>
<p>“But the point of a pilgrimage is to make a journey,” Sir Stephen protested.  “People who <em>live</em> in Compostela do not walk up the street to see the relics of Saint James and call it a pilgrimage.  Pilgrims are showing God that they are willing to undergo hardship.  To simply fly over all the obstacles in your way makes it seem so trivial.”</p>
<p>“Next time, we’ll let <em>you</em> pay for the tickets,” Clint said.  “Then we’ll see if you still call it ‘trivial’.”</p>
<p>In the parking lot they met the bus that would take them to their hotel, and everybody was relieved to find that it was air conditioned.  The landscape between the airport and the city was a broad desert valley with hazy hills visible all around the border of it.  Life hadn’t changed much here in thousands of years, Nat observed – it was still all stony red soil and tiny farms, though in the twenty-first century these were as likely to host rows of solar panels as lines of olive trees.  The buildings had white walls and red tile roofs, and sheep and goats grazed on little lots of pasture.</p>
<p>“How are we going to find Madame Desrosiers?” asked Allen.  “Athens is pretty big, isn’t it?”</p>
<p>“We’ll talk to people,” Nat replied.  “Expats in areas like this, warm places where people like to retire, tend to live in close-knit communities, and somebody who’s visiting will naturally look for her countrymen.  So we’ll find where the French people live, and ask around.”</p>
<p>“Oh,” said Allen.</p>
<p>Nat glanced at him and took in his expression.  “You sound disappointed.”</p>
<p>“Just a little,” he admitted.  “I was sort of hoping there would be some special spy method.”</p>
<p>“Sorry!” Nat said with an amused smile.  “Sometimes good old-fashioned legwork is best.”</p>
<p>“Absolutely,” Sharon agreed.  “Even nowadays, when we have CCTV cameras all over the country and DNA evidence, most of what a detective does is talk to people.”</p>
<p>“But while we’re in Athens,” Nat added, “you guys will probably want to let <em>me</em> do the actual talking.  Possibly Allen, too – the rest of you might want to stay in the background.”</p>
<p>Sam, Sharon, and Clint all nodded knowingly, but Sir Stephen was confused.  “Why?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Because they’re Americans, Steve,” said Sharon.  “Greeks don’t like British people, and they’ll like us even less now that we’ve at least <em>tried</em> to give that mummy back to Egypt.”</p>
<p>“Why is that?” Sir Stephen wanted to know.</p>
<p>“The Elgin Marbles,” said Natasha.  “Once we find Desrosiers, we ca go see the copies in the Acropolis Museum, and I’ll tell you about it.”</p>
<p>Athens itself was, like the countryside around it, very much a modern veneer draped over something much older.  The neighbourhood around their hotel was a maze of little roads between somewhat shabby-looking buildings, with tiny European cars and motorcycles zipping along with little regard for pedestrians or each other.  The entrance to the hotel was a narrow door in between a pharmacist’s and a camera shop.  Sharon and Sir Stephen checked them in at the front desk, while the rest of the committee took turns hauling their luggage up to the fourth floor in an elevator that claimed to be rated for nine people but barely looked big enough to hold three.  Once they had their rooms, they immediately turned on the air conditioning again and, since they’d had a series of very long days, went to bed early.</p>
<p>Nat was sharing a room with Allen.  As she was pulling her nightshirt over her head, she heard him say around his toothbrush, “I didn’t know Sir Isaac Newton was an alchemist.”</p>
<p>“A lot of people don’t,” said Natasha.  “His alchemical writings were only discovered in the 1930’s, but there’s loads of them.  He was apparently much more interested in magic and theology than he was in science and math, he just didn’t public what he wrote.”</p>
<p>“I wonder why not,” said Allen.</p>
<p>Nat knew the answer to that.  “Partly because Alchemy was illegal in England in the seventeenth century.  The Crown was tired of con men who promised to make gold but then just took gold and disappeared.  And Newton’s theological writings would have gotten him in trouble with the Church of England.  Heresy was punishable by death.”</p>
<p>Allen spit out his mouthful of toothpaste and rinsed.  “That <em>would</em> explain it,” he said.  “How do you possibly remember all this stuff?”</p>
<p>“I was trained to remember everything I read,” Nat explained, “and most of what I hear, if I’m paying attention.  Did you know that quail meat can be toxic if eaten at the wrong time of year, because the birds eat poisonous plants?  Or that a <em>churango</em> is a musical instrument made out of a dead armadillo?”</p>
<p>“No, I didn’t know any of that,” said Allen, standing in the bathroom doorway with a fond smile on his face.  “But I bet I won’t forget it.  You know who you sound like?”</p>
<p>“Who?” Nat asked, pulling out her own toiletries.</p>
<p>“My daughter,” he said gently.  “In my memories you were always full of stuff you’d learned and wanted to share.  You’d learn something new in ballet class and come home and show it to us.  Or you’d tell us what you learned in school that day – with your mouth full, when you were little.  Your Mom and I used to have to remind you to swallow first.”</p>
<p>Natasha could picture it – herself as a child, sitting there eating spaghetti while excitedly telling her family about… about what?  She <em>had</em> brought news home when she was small, but it wasn’t about her ballet classes.</p>
<p>She hadn’t <em>tried</em> to tense her muscles as she thought about it, but she must have, and Allen noticed the change in her posture.  “You’re upset now,” he observed.</p>
<p>“No, I’m fine,” Natasha said quickly and automatically.</p>
<p>Allen came and put his hands on her shoulders.  “No, I’ve upset you.  I can tell.”</p>
<p>She sighed and stepped away, hugging her own shoulders, then forced herself to give him a watery smile.  “It’s just that your version sounds way nicer than the real… than the one I remember.”</p>
<p>“Do you want to tell me about it?” he asked.</p>
<p>Natasha shut her eyes for a moment.  She knew he was asking because he cared.  He wanted to help her bear the weight of her bad memories, because that was what families did.  The problem was that Natasha’s memories were heavy indeed… she didn’t know if he were strong enough.</p>
<p>“That was a question,” he said.  “Not an order.”</p>
<p>“I’d rather not,” she decided.</p>
<p>“All right,” Allen nodded.  “I won’t ask you about it again.”</p>
<p>Nat exhaled, though her relief was mixed with a bit of disappointment.  “Thank you,” she said.  If he’d insisted… well, she might just actually tell him, and then he’d be sorry he’d asked.  She was still lying to him, wasn’t she?  Letting him think she was even an approximation of the little girl he remembered raising when it simply wasn’t true.  She was lying through her silence.</p>
<p>“I don’t want to be the type of father who doesn’t let my children have secrets,” he said.</p>
<p>Nat winched again.  “I’m sorry, I’m really tired,” she said.</p>
<p>“Me, too, Ginger Snap.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>In the morning they took advantage of the hotel’s free breakfast – which consisted mostly of hard-boiled eggs and ham sandwiches – then set out for the area where the desk clerk told them they were likely to find French expats.  It was on the other side of the Acropolis, technically not far, but to get there they would have to go around that high plateau in the middle of the city, which meant either a long walk or a long bus ride.</p>
<p>Since it was still early they chose to walk, but they quickly regretted it.  Even at nine in the morning the Greek sun was already blazing, and sweat was soon running down Natasha’s back.  The Acropolis itself loomed over the city, tall and bald and with the ruined temples protruding from its top like the bones of some enormous dead animal.  The giant flag at the south end was entirely still.  There was not a breath of wind to carry the perspiration away.</p>
<p>Allen, who was a bit overweight, was fanning himself with a tourist information pamphlet as they climbed a gentle slope.  “How did all those old Greeks do it?” he panted.  “Weren’t those togas made of <em>wool</em>?”</p>
<p>“Togas were Roman,” said Nat.  “Greeks wore a woolen <em>chlamys</em>.”  Not that it mattered what she <em>called</em> the thing – when Natasha tried to picture standing on top of the Acropolis in full sun, draped in what was effectively a blanket, it made her feel nauseous.  “The ancient Greeks did a lot of opium,” she said.</p>
<p>“That actually kind of makes sense,” said Allen.</p>
<p>“It’s no wonder they were so into sports,” Sam observed.  “You need to be in Olympic shape just to walk around the damn city.”</p>
<p>In the Keramikos they started to find businesses with signs in French to cater to foreigners.  There they split up, pretending to be poking around in souvenir shops or asking for directions, while scanning the faces in the shops and restaurants for any sign of Madame Desrosiers.  In this manner they made their way a couple of blocks up a street, until Nat found her way into a little café that served French pastries.  She took a look around, and then went up to speak to the clerk.</p>
<p>“Can I help you?” the man asked, in English.</p>
<p>“<em>I’m looking for a friend</em>,” Nat replied, in French.  “<em>She told me she’d be in Athens this fall, and I was hoping I’d run into her</em>.”</p>
<p>The clerk smiled.  “<em>I’m happy to help!  We all know each other here.  What’s her name?</em>”</p>
<p>“Helene Desrosiers,” said Nat.</p>
<p>The smile melted away immediately, and the clerk shook his head.  “<em>I’m afraid I don’t know her</em>.”</p>
<p>“<em>She doesn’t spend a lot of type here, just occasional visits</em>,” Nat said.  “<em>She’s East Asian by ancestry, but grew up around Paris</em>.”</p>
<p>“No,” said the Clerk.  “<em>That doesn’t sound familiar</em>.”</p>
<p>He was lying.  They would have to keep an eye on this place.  “<em>Thank you anyway</em>,” she said, and switched to English.  “While I’m here, I wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee.”</p>
<p>“Of course, <em>Mademoiselle</em>,” said the clerk, relieved.</p>
<p>He wasn’t just a liar, Natasha thought, as he brewed some French press coffee for her, he was a <em>bad</em> one.  He’d probably already talked to Desrosiers and would talk to her again, as soon as he thought Nat was gone.  What would she do when she learned that they’d followed her here?</p>
<p>A movement caught her eye, and she glanced over her shoulder.  The layout of the café was similar to many others in Mediterranean countries, a long, thin room behind a narrow storefront with a few tiny tables and chairs crammed down one side with the counter on the other.  People were sitting and chatting in French, English, and Greek while enjoying their drinks and snacks.  Tourists were going through the rack of postcards on the sidewalk outside.</p>
<p>What she’d seen out of the corner of her eye, however, was a single person – a man with shoulder-length brown hair, wearing distressed jeans and a black t-shirt, was loitering next to the rack with his hands in his pockets, trying to look casual.  Nat couldn’t see his face, but something about his build and posture were familiar.  Was that another Barnes?</p>
<p>“Your coffee, <em>Mademoiselle</em>,” said the clerk.</p>
<p>Nat smiled as she accepted it.  “<em>Merci beaucoup</em>,” she said.</p>
<p>“I hope you will enjoy Athens,” the man told her, with a return smile that did not reach his eyes.</p>
<p>When Nat turned back to the entrance, the man in the black shirt was gone.</p>
<p>For a moment she was torn.  Part of her wanted to go out and see if she could find him.  If he <em>was</em> another Barnes, then he might lead them right to Desrosiers or her mysterious Athenian colleague.  But if he <em>wasn’t</em>, she’d be wasting her time, and she needed to sneak around the back and eavesdrop on the phone call the clerk was doubtless about to make.  She couldn’t do both, but then, she reminded herself, she didn’t <em>have</em> to.  The rest of the Committee was nearby.</p>
<p>She went to the door to have a look around the rest of the street, and soon managed to spot him.  The man in the black t-shirt was now across the street, trying to get rid of a peddler who was determined to sell him a sunhat.  Nat took a quick picture and sent it to Sharon.</p>
<p><em>I think it’s another Barnes</em>, she texted.  <em>Can you keep an eye on him?  I have another lead to follow</em>.</p>
<p>Nat bought a big scarf and a pair of sunglasses from a tourist shop up the street, and made a kerchief out of the latter to hide her distinctive red hair.  With that for a disguise, she slipped back into the café and sat down at the back table with her laptop, pretending to work on something while keeping her eyes and ears on the clerk.  He continued to serve customers, and seemed equally fluent in French, English, and Greek.  The phone rang a couple of times, but judging from what he said, these calls were business-related.  She perked up a little when he <em>made</em> a call, especially when he looked rather awkward about it, but it turned out he was talking to his mother.  That seemed unlikely to be Madame Desrosiers.</p>
<p>By two o’clock in the afternoon, the heat and humidity were becoming unbearable.  It was cooler in the café, but not much, and the need to wear the scarf as a disguise wasn’t helping.  Nat could feel sweat soaking right through the thin fabric and trickling down the small of her back.  The clerk didn’t seem to have recognized her, and nobody had seen any sign of the possible Barnes or of Madame Desrosiers.</p>
<p>It was time to call it a day.  They chose the Acropolis Museum as a place where they could do a little sightseeing without feeling that they were being cooked alive, and there Natasha made good on her promise to tell Sir Stephen the story of the Elgin Marbles.</p>
<p>“The originals are in the British Museum,” she explained, as they wandered through the galleries.  On the top floor were plaster replicas of the reliefs, displayed in the same configuration as they would have been on the temple itself.  “The Greeks have been mad about it for two hundred years.”</p>
<p>“How did they get there?” asked Sir Stephen.</p>
<p>“Lord Elgin stole them,” said Sam.</p>
<p>“So I assumed,” Sir Stephen said, “but there must be more of a story to it than that.”</p>
<p>Everybody looked at Natasha.</p>
<p>“There are a couple of versions of the story,” she said, “but what seems to have happened is that he got a license from the government to take casts of them for preservation, then instead he bribed the port authorities to let him ship the originals back to England.  Ostensibly his excuse was that he didn’t want them broken up for lime by the Turkish army, which was occupying Athens at the time.  He originally intended to use them to decorate his new house, but he ran out of money and had to sell them to the British government.”</p>
<p>“Stole them,” Sam repeated with a nod.</p>
<p>“Just like Napoleon’s troops stole Princess Sitamun from Egypt,” Nat agreed.</p>
<p>“And they tried to give the princess back to the Egyptians, but only so that Madame Desrosiers could not have her,” Sir Stephen observed.  “Whereas this marble they’re determined to keep?”</p>
<p>“Yep,” said Nat.  “Apparently they’re ‘part of the cultural history of all western nations’ or something.”</p>
<p>Sir Stephen nodded thoughtfully.  “This man Elgin.  Would you call him an archaeologist?”</p>
<p>“Absolutely not,” said Nat.</p>
<p>“Is that not what archaeologists do?” he asked.  “Take the treasures of the past and put them in museums, far away from the people who made them?”</p>
<p>“Elgin didn’t even consider <em>himself</em> an archaeologist, he said he was an art conservator,” said Nat.  “Archaeologists don’t do that sort of thing anymore, at least mostly not.”  There were, sadly, always exceptions.  “If you take stuff away from where you found it, you lose most of the information that comes with it.”</p>
<p>“Though you condemn the wrongs of the past, you don’t see fit to right them,” Sir Stephen noted.</p>
<p>“Wait until returning the marbles will piss somebody off,” said Nat.  “Then they’ll get right on it.”</p>
<p>They headed downstairs and were admiring the Caryatids, the six statues that had supported the porch roof of the Erechtheon, when Natasha noticed a familiar figure among the crowd.  Behind the display of statues was a balcony that looked down to the floor below, where there were glass panels over an archaeological excavation directly underneath the museum building.  And standing next to that, trying to pretend he wasn’t looking at them, was the man in the black t-shirt.</p>
<p>This time, Natasha <em>could</em> see his face, and she recognized it at once.</p>
<p>When he realized she was looking at him, the man in black quickly turned his head.  Nat kept her eyes on him as she walked around to the other side of the statues.  The figures had elaborate hairstyles that were only visible from behind, and Sharon and Sir Stephen were looking at them.  Nat touched Sir Stephen’s arm, and he looked over his shoulder at her.</p>
<p>“What is it?” he asked.</p>
<p>“The man with the long hair, in the black t-shirt,” she murmured.  “That’s the guy I saw at the café.  Does he look familiar?”</p>
<p>Sir Stephen craned his neck.  “He is facing in the other direction.  Is he another Buckeye?”</p>
<p>Nat followed his gaze – the man in black had indeed turned around.  “Definitely,” she said, “and I’m pretty sure he’s following us on purpose.”  She pursed her lips.  “Let’s go back upstairs.”  The museum had a recommended walkthrough route that most visitors followed.  Returning to the Parthenon level would be going against the flow.  If the man in the black t-shirt turned up there, too, it would be a strong indication that he was watching them.</p>
<p>They found Sam and Allen, who had wandered off following Clint – he was insisting that somewhere in the museum was the world’s oldest computer.  Natasha calmly informed him that the Antikythera Mechanism was in the National Archaeological Museum, about four kilometres away.  She escorted them back up to the top floor, and they all sat down on the benches in the north gallery.</p>
<p>From there they had a stunning view of the Acropolis itself, now shimmering in the full afternoon sun.  In spite of that, and the fact that there was still no wind, the whole hilltop was crawling with tourists.  Nat decided to pretend she was giving a tour, herself.</p>
<p>“Those arches there,” she said, pointing to a feature visible at the foot of the hill, “are part of the Odeon of Herodas, where they still hold performances and cultural events.  On the right you can see a sort of dish-shaped slope, which is the remains of the Theatre of Dionysus…”</p>
<p>She was trying to remember the proper name of the Acropolis gate when she realized her companions were no longer listening to her.  They were all looking to the right – and there was the man in the black t-shirt, contemplating one of the carvings of the Lapiths and centaurs.  Sir Stephen watched him a moment longer, then stood up.</p>
<p>“Sir Steve.”  Nat caught his shirt.  “The marbles are replicas but there are other things in here that are very old and absolutely priceless.  The Greeks are gonna hate us even <em>more</em> if you start a fight in here.”</p>
<p>“I don’t intend to fight him,” said Sir Stephen.  “But I <em>must</em> know who he is.”  He pulled free of her hand, and walked towards the man in black.</p>
<p>Nat went after him.  Nobody asked the others to come, but they did anyway, also conscious of how easily this encounter could go wrong.  As they came closer, Natasha could see that the man in black was watching them out of the corners of his eyes.  He pretended he was just looking at the artworks, but his body language changed, moving his weight from his heels onto the balls of his feet, and swaying a little with his hands in his pockets.  He was anxious and ready to react – which was interesting.  Barnes on the train had shown no sign of any nerves.  Did homunculi have different personalities?</p>
<p>“Jim!” Nat called out, as if greeting an old friend.  “Do you remember me?”  She, too, was tense, not knowing what to expect.  Would he run?  Would he attack her?</p>
<p>He did neither.  Instead, he looked surprised, then frowned in confusion.  “Huh?” he asked.  “No.  I did see you in a restaurant earlier today, but I don’t know you.”  He was clearly nervous, trying far too hard to be casual.  Maybe the anxiety was part of his act.</p>
<p>“Well, how about me?” asked Sir Stephen.  “Surely you know me!”</p>
<p>The man shook his head.  “No,” he said, a bit more sure of it this time.  “No, I don’t know you, either.”</p>
<p>“Who are you, then?” asked Nat.</p>
<p>“I’m an art student,” he said, and gestured up at the sculptures.  “I’m here to see these.”</p>
<p>She folded her arms over her chest.  “Well, you look an awful lot like our friend Jim.  Maybe you’re a relative or something.  Let’s go to the coffee shop by the bookstore, we’ll buy you a snack and see if we can figure it out.”</p>
<p>The man in black looked wary.  “Um…” he said.</p>
<p>“You can’t turn down free food,” said Nat, in a tone meant to suggest he would not like the consequences of refusal.</p>
<p>“I guess I can’t,” he agreed nervously.</p>
<p>They went downstairs to the mezzanine, where Nat bought the man a coffee and a pastry.  Sam and Clint pushed two tables together, and they all sat down with drinks and snacks of their own to look like an informal group of friends.  Once everybody was settled, Natasha leaned a little closer to the man in black.</p>
<p>“Why were you following us?” she asked.</p>
<p>He paused with a chocolate-filled croissant halfway to his mouth.  After a moment of indecision, he bit into it, chewed, and washed the mouthful down with coffee before replying.  “Because somebody paid me to.  He pointed you out in the Keramikos and said he’d appreciate it if I could follow you around and see what you were up to.”</p>
<p>He had to be lying.  Nat <em>knew</em> he had to be lying, because he was clearly another homunculus, with the same face as Barnes on the train and the man who’d tried to drop a block of stone on Madame Desrosiers.  Yet every indication in his voice and face was that he was telling the truth and a little worried about it, as if he thought he were going to get in trouble.  Did <em>he</em> believe what he was saying to her?  Had Barnes believed he really was a reporter from new York, until the moment some other programming kicked in?</p>
<p>“Who is <em>he</em>?” asked Sharon.</p>
<p>“He said his name was Neustadt,” the man in black replied.  “I just met him this morning.  I don’t know who he is besides that.”</p>
<p><em>Neustadt</em>.  Nat remembered that whatever Desrosiers had muttered under her breath when she’d heard about the fate of the mummy had sounded like German.  Was <em>Neustadt</em> the man who’d stolen it?  “We don’t know who he is, either,” she said to the man in black.  “This is the first time we’ve heard of him, either.  Why did he want you to follow us?”</p>
<p>“He said you were talking to his friend ‘Nelle, and he wanted to know why you were interested in her,” he said.</p>
<p>“Who is ‘Nelle?  Do you mean Madame Desrosiers?”  <em>Nell</em> could be short for <em>Helen</em>, but was more usually a nickname for <em>Eleanor</em>.</p>
<p>“I don’t know.  I’ve never met her.”  The man in black squirmed a little in his chair.  “I’m in trouble, aren’t I?”</p>
<p>“Maybe,” said Nat.</p>
<p>“Definitely,” said Sam.</p>
<p>Natasha glared at him.  “Maybe,” she repeated.  Madame Desrosiers had said homunculi only lived for a couple of weeks – the man in black wouldn’t be alive long enough to get into any trouble.  “I think we need to talk to Herr Neustadt.  Can you take us to him?”</p>
<p>The man looked uncertain.  “He just wanted me to watch you.  I don’t know if he wants to <em>talk</em> to you.”</p>
<p>“We want to talk to <em>him</em>,” said Nat firmly.</p>
<p>“Where was he when you met him?” Sharon tried.</p>
<p>“I… I’d rather not say,” the man replied.  He was sweating now – Nat could see it shining on his temples.  He was afraid of Neustadt.</p>
<p>“It doesn’t have to be at his house,” said Nat.  “Just some neutral location where we can talk.  We don’t need to know where he lives.  We just want to ask him some questions.”</p>
<p>“We’re with the British government,” Sharon added, showing her CAAP badge.  The others pulled theirs out, too.  “We’re investigating the theft and destruction of the sarcophagus of Princess Sitamun, and Madame Desrosiers suggested that Mr. Neustadt was involved.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know about any of that,” the man insisted.  He glanced in several directions, then started to stand up.  “I can call him and ask, though.  Can you give me a minute?”</p>
<p>Nat reached out and took his wrist – gently, but with the suggestion that she could hold on much harder if she wanted.  “A minute, yes, but no privacy.  Call him right here.”  She was sure that if she took her eyes off this man for a moment, he would disappear.</p>
<p>“I don’t have a cell phone,” the man in black said.</p>
<p>“You can use mine,” Allen offered.</p>
<p>“No…” said the man in black carefully.  “No, I’d rather not.”</p>
<p>If he used Allen’s phone, the number he dialed would be recorded in its memory.  “Then we’ll find something else,” Nat decided.</p>
<p>They ended up using the bank of pay telephones in the Akropoli Metro Station, the man in black talking quietly into the handset while the others stood in a semicircle, far enough back that they couldn’t eavesdrop and yet straining their ears to try to catch a few words anyway.  After a couple of minutes, the man hung up and turned to talk to them.</p>
<p>“He says he’ll be here in a few minutes,” he said.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Mr. Neustadt</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was hot, dim and stuffy in the underground station, with no air conditioning, but the six members of the CAAP settled down on some benches to wait.  On the wall across from them were more replicas of the Parthenon sculptures, these ones worn-down and shiny from people touching them as they passed.  The man in black remained standing, wandering nervously up and down in front of the plaster reliefs.</p><p>“What’s your name?” Natasha asked him.</p><p>The man in black paused a moment.  “Uh.  Jim,” he decided, and it was clearly a <em>decision</em>, not a <em>recall</em>.</p><p>“Jim who?” she tried.</p><p>“I’d rather not,” he said.  “I think I’m in enough trouble.”</p><p>“You won’t be in trouble,” Natasha promised him.  “It’s just we may need you as a witness later.”</p><p>“That sounds like trouble to me,” he said.</p><p>About thirty minutes went by while they sat in uncomfortable semi-silence, with perspiration soaking into their clothes.  Various people passed by, on their way to the trains or up to the street, but nobody showed any interest in the Committee, and none of the passers-by looked anything like an alchemist… whatever an alchemist might look like.  Nat perked up a little when she saw a man with a German flag on his backpack, but he turned out to be a tourist, there with his family.  She drummed her fingers impatiently on her knee and wondered whether this had been a trick.  Maybe this Neustadt was already on his way out of town.</p><p>The first person to approach them looked at first like another tourist.  He was short, no more than five foot six, and looked to be in his late fifties with thinning gray hair worn long and a jowly face that made Nat think of a basset hound.  He was dressed in a pair of cut-off shorts and a red t-shirt that claimed to be a souvenir of Winnipeg, Canada, and a very beat-up green hat with the balding remnant of a feather in the bad.</p><p>This man moseyed up to them with his hands in his pockets, and gave them a smile that showed he was missing his top right incisor.  “I hear you want to talk to me,” he said in English.  His accent was not German, but Lincolnshire.  Natasha recalled that a lot of Germans had immigrated to England in the nineteenth century.  Maybe his ancestors had been among them.</p><p>Sir Stephen stood up to shake the man’s hand.  “We do,” he said.  “I am Sir Stephen of Rogsey.”</p><p>“And I’m Dr. Natalie Jones.”  Nat stood up to join in, and let the others introduce themselves one by one.  “We’re the Committee for the Appraisal of Archaeological Peril from the UK, and we’re investigating the theft of the sarcophagus and mummy of Princess Sitamun.”</p><p>“Yes, I’ve heard of you,” said Neustadt pleasantly.  “I’d heard about the Holy Grail but I never believed in it.  I guess even a codger like me still has a few things to learn!  But I’m glad you’ve got better sense than to believe ‘Nelle saying <em>I</em> took your mummy.”</p><p>If ‘Nelle’ were in fact Madame Desrosiers, she’d said no such thing, but it was interesting that he assumed she had.</p><p>“It’s a little early for coming to conclusions at this point,” said Sharon, always the detective.  “There are two sides to every story.  We need to get yours.”</p><p>Nat nodded.  “If the mummy had to be destroyed because it was dangerous, then we need to know about it.”</p><p>She’d said that to give Neustadt an easy answer, to see if he would rise to the bait.  The simplest thing for him to do would be to agree with her, but he did not.</p><p>“Oh, no, the mummy isn’t dangerous,” said Neustadt.  “She’s dead!  You’d do better to worry about ‘Nelle, who is very much alive.”  He looked over his shoulder a moment.  It was getting to be late in the afternoon but there were plenty of people out and about, both Athenians and tourists going in different directions.  None of them were paying any obvious attention to the group standing next to the relief replicas, but Neustadt seemed wary nevertheless.  “Shall we find somewhere quieter?”</p><p>“Somewhere with AC?” asked Sam.</p><p>“And coffee?” Clint agreed.</p><p>“I know where we can find both,” said Neustadt.  “Follow me.”</p><p>He took them down to the trains and they rode to Omonia station, which was just a short walk from the Trata seafood restaurant.  It was a ramshackle little place with yellow walls and blue and white chairs and tables, and Neustadt ordered everybody calamari and mussels, insisting that dinner would be his treat.  He even paid for a bottle of Malagousia wine.  Natasha had already felt suspicious of him, and his generosity made her more so.  He must want something in return, but what?</p><p>“Excellent, excellent,” he said, once the waiter had taken the order.  “Now you’ll have to tell me – what did ‘Nelle say to you, exactly?”</p><p>“That depends on who ‘Nelle is,” Nat said cautiously.  She wasn’t going to make any assumptions.</p><p>“Ah, so she didn’t tell you her old name then.”  Neustadt nodded.  He was going to try to trick them into revealing what he wanted to know, Natasha thought.  She’d have to be on her guard.  “She’s Helene Desrosiers these days, I believe,” the man went on, “but when you’re seven hundred years old you go through a lot of names, and she might be even older.  When she was famous, she called herself Perenelle Flamel.”</p><p><em>That</em> name was instantly familiar, for several reasons.</p><p>“Flamel?” asked Sam.  “You mean, like Nicolas Flamel from <em>Harry Potter</em>?”</p><p>Neustadt chuckled.  “The very same!  You thought they made him up, didn’t you?”</p><p>“Nicolas Flamel was a French scribe and bookseller in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century,” said Natasha, hoping to save Neustadt’s impression of them – though <em>Harry Potter</em> had been <em>her</em> first thought, too.  “He married a very wealthy woman named Perenelle whose past is unknown.  They endowed several churches, and each have a street in Paris named after them.  They weren’t fictional characters, but they’re not described as alchemists until the seventeenth century.”  She met Neustadt’s eyes, watching carefully for his reaction.</p><p>He seemed pleased.  “Nick did that himself,” he said.  “He figured his original identity had been ‘dead’ long enough that he could publish his writings and not be accused of heresy or witchcraft.  He thought the start of natural philosophy meant alchemy could be brought out of the shadows and taught to the masses, though ‘Nelle didn’t think much of the idea.  She doesn’t believe ordinary people could handle that kind of knowledge and the power it would give them.”  Neustadt pondered for a moment.  “That’s probably why she killed him.”</p><p>Nat glanced at Clint, and found him with his hand under the hem of his t-shirt again, rubbing at his injury with his thumb.  She decided to try the direct approach.</p><p>“So what was hidden <em>inside</em> the mummy?” she asked.</p><p>“The key,” he replied at once.</p><p>“The key to where?” Sharon wanted to know.</p><p>“Oh, not a door.”  Neustadt shook his head.  “The key to the book.  It contains instructions for decoding the Book of Hermes that tells you how to create the Philosopher’s Stone.”</p><p>Nat tilted her head to one side and frowned.  “Don’t you already know that?” she asked.  “I mean, you and Desrosiers are both still alive after all these centuries.  Seems to me you don’t need instructions anymore.”</p><p>“Well, we’re not really <em>immortal</em>,” said Neustadt.  “We can postpone our aging to stay alive indefinitely, but that’s not the same.  Push us off a cliff and we’ll still go splat at the bottom.  That’s just medicine, though – it has nothing to do with the Philosopher’s Stone.  The <em>real</em> Philosopher’s Stone is the transmutation of matter.”</p><p>“Making gold,” said Sharon.</p><p>“Gold or anything else you please,” said Neustadt.  “‘Nelle’s been trying to get the key back since she realized Nick hid it in the mummy, a hundred and fifty years ago.  First she murdered him, and then his next apprentice.  She never liked him having apprentices.  I’ve been living the last century in Australia, staying out of her way, and if you think Athens is hot in October, you’ve never been to Penrith!”</p><p>Desrosiers had said she’d known who stole the mummy and murdered the people who were supposedly victims of its curse, and Nat had assumed she meant this person in Athens.  Neustadt himself seemed to assume that was what she’d told him.  Now he was telling them <em>she’d</em> done it all.  The very fact that he was so much more forthcoming than Desrosiers had been made Nat want to side with him, but she kept her guard up.  Just because he was happy to talk to them didn’t mean that what he’d said was the truth, and Neustadt was still the man who’d created those homunculi.</p><p>“So what does Mrs. Flamel want with the Philosopher’s Stone?” asked Sharon.</p><p>“To make something, obviously,” Neustadt said.  “That’s what it does.  It can turn dung into diamonds, or snot into silver.  Whatever you like.”</p><p>“How does it do that?” asked Nat.  Desrosiers had suggested that alchemy was a form of science, and it certainly didn’t resemble the magic they’d encountered at the hands of the Red Death.  What did that leave?</p><p>“The same way the heart of a star makes heavy elements from hydrogen,” Neustadt replied.  “Through nuclear fusion and sometimes through fission, whichever is needed.  It’s a very powerful device, and a very dangerous one.  ‘Nelle has one of only three remaining copies of the Book of Hermes that I’m aware of.  I have the second, and the last is in a collection in America, being pored over by ‘experts’ who have no idea where to start.  Now that ‘Nelle’s taken the mummy, she has the <em>only</em> remaining copy of the key, and I’m afraid she’s going to destroy it.”</p><p>That made sense.  There was no good reason why anybody would steal an ancient mummy and a priceless sarcophagus only to destroy them, but a <em>book</em> was very different.  Objects like mummies and art were only valuable when they were intact, but the value of knowledge often lay in people <em>not</em> having it.  As a spy, Nat was intimately familiar with that idea.</p><p>“Then she probably already has,” she observed.  “What difference does it make?”</p><p>“Well, it would be a tragic loss of secrets Nick himself wanted to make more widely known,” Neustadt explained.  “As I said: he’d come to believe that humanity as a whole had a right to this information.  If anybody could make gold, the rich would be no better than the poor.  If there were enough wealth and life for everybody, we could all stop toiling in the mud and make art, explore science, devote ourselves to God, whatever we wished!  He saw an end to all human suffering.  ‘Nelle disagreed.”</p><p>That was worryingly plausible.  Desrosiers had healed Clint, apparently out of a sense of obligation, but she’d been very defensive and secretive about it.  Sam had told her that she could save countless lives and she hadn’t been the least bit interested.  Although… Neustadt clearly wasn’t going around publicizing alchemy, either.</p><p>“Okay, we don’t want to have any misunderstandings here,” said Sharon, “so just to be sure we understand: you’re telling us that Desrosiers herself murdered at least a dozen people to get the mummy back, and now she’s stolen and destroyed it.  She did this all by herself.”</p><p>“In so many words, I guess I am,” Neustadt replied.  “I didn’t <em>see</em> her do it, of course, but I’m sure she did.  Probably by poison.  She’s always been interested in the biology of alchemy more than the physics, and she’s a master of poisons.”</p><p>It would have sounded very convincing indeed were it not for the one thing he didn’t know they knew.  Sir Stephen now played that ace.  “What about the homunculi?” he demanded.  He pointed at Jim, who was sitting across from him.</p><p>“What about the… what?” asked Jim.</p><p>“The homunculi.”  Sir Stephen continued talking to Neustadt.  “Madame Desrosiers said you made beings like him using her healing elixir, but that you must have a model for them.  Who is your model, and how did you come upon him?”</p><p>Nat had been expecting Neustadt would be at least a <em>little</em> taken aback by this, but he didn’t even blink.  “First of all, it’s not ‘Nelle’s elixir,” he said.  “I believe it was Von Hohenheim – Paracelsus – who created it, though it wouldn’t surprise me if she tried to take the credit.  The model was nobody, just some corpse in a glacier.  I don’t know who he was or where he came from.  He must already have been dead for centuries when I found his mortal remains.  I didn’t want homunculi anyone would recognize, so I considered his discovery a gift from God.”</p><p>“Just a sec, back up,” Jim said, but everybody ignored him.</p><p>“The homunculi are no threat to you,” Neustadt added.  “They only live for a couple of weeks, and they only know what I tell them they know.”</p><p>“But what about…” Jim began.</p><p>“One of them was a pretty big threat to me at Guedelon!” Clint protested.  He hiked up his shirt, but then remembered the injury was no longer visible.  “He stabbed me and he didn’t even apologize!”</p><p>“Because it thought you were protecting ‘Nelle,” said Neustadt.  “If I get another opportunity to try to recover the key, I will tell them not to bother you.  I don’t like unnecessary casualties, unlike some people.”</p><p>“<em>Guys</em>!” Jim insisted.  “Can I get a word in here?”</p><p>“You be silent,” Neustadt ordered him.</p><p>Nat did feel a bit sorry for Jim, as the others shouted him down repeatedly, and she didn’t envy whoever was going to have to explain to him what he was, but it was time for the tough questions.  “There were at least two of him at the train robbery,” she said to Neustadt.  “Why were they there, if Perenelle was the one who took the mummy?”</p><p>“Because I sent them to retrieve the key before she could get it,” Neustadt said.  “None of them made it back to me, and then the mummy turned up in pieces in a ditch, with the key gone.  I’m sorry if they did you any other harm.  Like I said, it won’t happen again.”</p><p>Nat looked at Sharon, who nodded – that was a confession.  Even if somebody <em>else</em> had subsequently re-stolen it, Neustadt was the one who’d arranged the original theft of the mummy.</p><p>“Everybody, <em>shut up</em>!” Jim shouted desperately.</p><p>Silence fell over the table, and they all turned to look at him.</p><p>“What’s going on” he asked.  His eyes were darting back and forth like a frightened animal’s.  “What… what do you think is going to happen to me?”</p><p>“I’m sorry about him,” said Neustadt.  “I can shut him down if you like.”</p><p>“<em>What</em>?”  Jim pushed his chair back from the table.</p><p>“Don’t!”  Nat held up a hand.  “What do you mean, <em>shut him down</em>?”</p><p>“They’ve got a kill switch, of sorts.”  Neustadt put a hand on his own neck, with the fingers under the edge of his jaw.  “Pressure to the hyoid bone, here and here, and they disintegrate.”</p><p>Nat recalled that one homunculus had fallen apart when Allen yanked a gas mask off him, another when Natasha had threatened strangulation… but for the moment the solution to that mystery was less important than the fact that Neustadt was reaching to grab Jim by the neck.  Jim’s eyes were bulging in terror, but he looked oddly incapable of doing anything about it.</p><p>Sir Stephen jumped to his feet.  “Stop!” he ordered.</p><p>Most people would have found this a very intimidating sight – Sir Stephen was over six feet tall, which would have made him a giant in the eleventh century and was still above average, and when he shouted it was in a voice that sounded as if it would have you beheaded for refusing.  Neustadt didn’t look very impressed, but he did withdraw his hand.</p><p>“Don’t be like that,” he said.  “They’re not people.  They only think they are because I tell them so.  Only God can give a man a soul.”  He rapped on the side of Jim’s head with two fingers.  “The lights may appear to be on, but nobody’s home in there.”</p><p>Jim swatted Neustadt’s hand aside, and Nat felt sorry for him again.  He looked very pale, confused and frightened.</p><p>“All the same, I would prefer not to see him harmed,” said Sir Stephen.  “He looks very much like a dear friend of mine.”</p><p>“Oh, I see,” said Neustadt.  “My apologies, then.  I’ll wait until you’ve gone.”  He finished his wine and set the empty glass down again.  “Now… since I’ve told you all that,” he added, “I was hoping you might help <em>me</em> with something in return.”</p><p>Of course, Natasha thought.  He hadn’t told them all that for nothing.  “Help with what?”</p><p>“With some perilous archaeology!” he replied with a smile.  “What else?”</p><p>Sharon didn’t find it funny.  “We told you, we work for the government of the United Kingdom,” she said.  “We’re not mercenaries.”</p><p>“No, no, I understand that,” Neustadt assured her.  “I really do need the help, though.  I’ve left quite an important artifact with a friend in Kotor, and with ‘Nelle on my case I don’t feel safe going back there to get it.”</p><p>Nat didn’t think she trusted that.  So far it was <em>Neustadt</em> they’d seen trying to kill <em>Desrosiers</em>, not the other way around… but perhaps he was about to tell them something else important.  “Go on,” she said.</p><p>“I don’t know if you know where Kotor is,” Neustadt said.  “It’s a couple of hundred miles north of here, on the coast of the Adriatic.”</p><p>“Montenegro.”  Nat nodded.  “I do know where that is.”</p><p>“I didn’t want to take it for granted.  Americans and the British have a reputation for being terrible with geography outside their own countries,” Neustadt said apologetically.  “During the time of the Venetian empire I gave something to a friend of mine there for safekeeping, and he hid it at a monastery called the Holy Dove.”  He took a card out of his pocket and began writing something down.  “I don’t know if ‘Nelle knows about it, and I don’t want to go myself and risk her following me.  If you could go and tell Brother Luka to send the item to this address in Australia, I’d be much obliged.”</p><p>He handed the card to Nat.  Written on it in a tidy, looping script was an address in New South Wales.</p><p>“You don’t think Mrs. Flamel will be a threat to <em>us</em>?” asked Sam.</p><p>“You less so than I,” said Neustadt.  “Her obsession with secrecy will hold her back.  If it were me she’d stop at nothing, but she’ll be too scared that one of you would survive and tell the world.  Safety in numbers, you know.”</p><p>That wasn’t very reassuring.  “Anything else we need to know?” asked Nat.</p><p>Neustadt thought for a moment.  “If you need some form of reassurance that I’m telling the truth, you can find the book.  It’s in the library of Yale University in the United States.  They call it the Voynich Manuscript, after the man who found it in a monastery library.  I’d wish you good luck decoding it, but you’ll never get it without the key.  There’s at least fifty different codes used in it, and you need the key to even tell you which one is on which page.”</p><p>“I’ve heard of that,” said Allen.</p><p>“So have I,” Nat agreed.  A mysterious medieval book, written in an unknown language.  People had been puzzling over it for years, and it was interesting that Neustadt said only three copies existed when facsimiles of the manuscript were available in public libraries.  Was there something about the original book that could <em>not</em> be reproduced?  Perhaps things like the choices of ink or the decision to write on the hair side or flesh side of the parchment were, themselves, parts of the code.</p><p>“And now I’m afraid I’d better go, before anybody else realizes I’m in Athens,” Neustadt added.  He stood up and put some money on the table to pay their bill.  “I wish you well, and I hope you can visit Kotor for me.  If you can’t, no hard feelings, but it would be a shame to see my work destroyed.”  He took Jim by the wrist and pulled him to his feet.</p><p>“Wait!” Jim protested.  He’d been quiet the past few minutes, perhaps out of fear that Neustadt would kill him if he spoke up.  Now he must be terrified that he was about to be killed anyway.</p><p>“Wait,” Sir Stephen agreed, reaching for Neustadt.  “I have one more thing I must ask of you.”</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“Let this man go.”  Sir Stephen gestured to Jim.  “He does not want to be taken away with you.  Let him have what life he may, and give those remains you found a proper burial.  I do not know whether the body in the glacier was my friend or not, but whoever he was, he does not deserve the way you have used him.”</p><p>Neustadt grimaced, then sighed and nodded.  “Very well,” he said, “I give you my word.  Have a good evening, all of you.”  He let go of Jim, then touched the brim of his hat and left the restaurant.</p><p>They all waited until they were sure he was gone, and then Sir Stephen thumped the heel of his hand on the table, rattling all the plates and glasses.  “Not a word of that was true!” he declared.  “Damn the man – not a word!”</p><p>“We don’t know that,” Sharon told him.  “He’s given us some leads, and now to find out what’s true, we have to follow them.”</p><p>“Why did you not simply arrest him?” Sir Stephen asked her.</p><p>“Because I’m not allowed to,” she explained patiently.  “If he needs to be arrested, we have to get the Greek police to do it, and then extradite him.  For that, we need evidence that he committed a crime on British soil, and we don’t have that yet.  I don’t trust him when he says Madame Desrosiers did it all, but I don’t know if I believe <em>her</em> when she says she <em>didn’t</em>.  We have to leave him for now.”</p><p>“We will never see him again,” Sir Stephen predicted glumly.</p><p>“What about <em>me</em>?” Jim asked.</p><p>Nobody knew what to say to him.  Nat looked around at the others, but they only shrugged and avoided her eyes.  It was important to tell people the truth.  They’d <em>saved</em> the whole idea of truth by stopping the Red Death from getting the Holy Grail, and they hadn’t done that so they could tell lies later.  But <em>this</em> truth was entirely too much like the ones Allen kept urging Nat to tell him.  It was a truth that nobody wanted to hear.</p><p>“Where do I come into this?” he asked again.  “What’s… why don’t I remember my name?  Why don’t I remember <em>anything</em> very clearly from before he told me to keep an eye on you guys this morning?”</p><p>Nobody answered, and Nat shut her eyes for a moment as she realized that they were going to make <em>her</em> explain.  She didn’t know how any of this worked, any better than they did.  Why was <em>she</em> the one who had to put words to the weird parts?  “You’re a homunculus.  As Madame Desrosiers explained it to us, you’re an artificial person.  Neustadt made you out of a tissue sample and some stuff that can mimic other cells.”</p><p>Jim shut his eyes and gulped, as if he were literally swallowing a very difficult pill.  “He did that <em>just</em> so I could watch you guys for an afternoon?”</p><p>That <em>was</em> an awfully trivial reason to do what amounted to literally creating a human being.  “Yeah.  Seems that way,” said Nat.</p><p>“Is there anything you can do about it?” Jim asked.</p><p>“We don’t know,” she admitted.  “We’re not alchemists.”</p><p>Jim tapped one foot on the floor a couple of times, glancing around the restaurant.  Other diners had looked up when members of the group had raised their voices, but nobody was paying particular attention to them now.  After a moment of indecision, Jim got up and ran out, perhaps hoping to catch up with Neustadt.</p><p>Sir Stephen stood, too.  “I’m going to follow him,” he said.  “I will meet you at the hotel later.”</p><p>“Wait for me,” said Nat.  “I’ll come with you.”  She looked at the card in her hand, with the address on it, and then handed it to Sam.  “Give this to Fury,” she said.  “Tell him about Neustadt and mention the Voynich manuscript.”</p><p>“We’re not actually going to Montenegro, are we?” Sam asked.</p><p>Nat shook her head.  “It’s got to be a trap.  It’s <em>got</em> to be,” she said – whether Neustadt wanted to get rid of <em>them</em> somehow, or whether he planned to use them against Desrosiers or her against them was impossible to say, but she was <em>sure</em> it couldn’t be just a straightforward request.  “He must know that if we get our hands on any secret writings, we’ll read them.”</p><p>“Maybe he’s counting on it,” Allen suggested.  “He did say he wants more people to know about alchemy.”</p><p>“No, he said Flamel wanted that – he hasn’t told us what <em>he</em> wants at all,” said Nat.</p><p>“Quickly, Natalie,” Sir Stephen urged.  “Before we lose them.”</p><p>It had been several minutes now since Neustadt had left the restaurant.  From the front door they couldn’t see any sign of him or of Jim, but since Neustadt had met them at a metro station and had then taken them to the Trata by train, Nat figured he most likely had returned to Omonia.  They cut through Gamveta to get there faster, but when they emerged onto the wider thoroughfare of 28<sup>th</sup> Street beyond, Sir Stephen spotted Neustadt and Jim heading not south to the station, but north.  They were carrying on a conversation in low voices, their words inaudible.</p><p>Nat and Sir Stephen went after them.</p><p>“I was always told that magic could not create life,” Sir Stephen murmured.  “What a terrible power to have.”</p><p>“Madame Desrosiers said it wasn’t magic,” Nat reminded him.  “Science can’t create life <em>yet</em>, but they’re working on it… and I get the idea that this elixir, if it’s made of single-celled organisms, is already kind of alive.”  One of the defining properties of life was that it made more of itself.  Every person, every animal, every tree and mushroom and insect and amoeba on Earth could all trace their ancestry back to some first spark of life, billions of years ago.</p><p>“Maybe not,” said Sir Stephen, and then asked plaintively, “why did it have to be Buckeye?”</p><p>“Do you really think it is?” Nat asked.</p><p>“Neustadt said he found the body in a glacier,” said Sir Stephen.  “Buckeye died in a fall from the mountain.  I do not know if the others ever looked for him, but with the invasion from Normandy looming it is likely that they did not.  For all I know he lay there frozen for three hundred years until this man decided his mortal remains would be of use to him.”</p><p>That made <em>slightly</em> more sense than imagining him lying there for a thousand years like Ötzi the Iceman, but not much.  There was also the question of whether Sir James Buckeye had ever actually existed, but that was probably beside the point.  The point was that this situation was causing Sir Stephen pain.</p><p>They followed Neustadt and Jim all the way up the road to the National Archaeological Museum.  This was closed for the night, but the two men stopped on the broad stone pavement in front of it and shook hands, then parted.  Jim headed for the museum building, while Neustadt went back the way he came.</p><p>Nat and Sir Stephen quickly stepped into a doorway so as not to be observed as Neustadt passed them.  Once he was gone, Sir Stephen made to follow Jim into the museum, but Nat stopped him.</p><p>“Don’t,” she said.</p><p>“But…” Sir Stephen began.</p><p>“He said he doesn’t even remember his name,” Nat said.  “There’s nothing we can learn from him.  If there were, Neustadt wouldn’t have let him go.”  And if Sir Stephen tried to talk to him, hoping he would be Buckeye… well, that would be like Allen talking to Natasha in the hope she would be his daughter.  It just wasn’t going to work that way.  “It’s Neustadt we have to follow.”</p><p>Sir Stephen looked back towards the museum, but Jim was gone now.  “Where do you think he’s going?”</p><p>“Well, that’s the Archaeological Museum,” said Nat.  “I guess he’s going to see the art.”  It was after hours, so he’d have to break in… but maybe he thought that would be worth it if he got to see what was in it before he died.  One of the things Jim believed about himself was that he was an art student.</p><p>Reluctantly, Sir Stephen joined Natasha in following Neustadt back to the train station.  “Perhaps if we are in time, we should take him back to England with us, that he might see the originals of those marbles you spoke of,” he said.</p><p>“Maybe,” said Nat, although she doubted they’d ever see Jim again, either.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. A Midnight Visitor</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Neustadt returned to the train station, and took the metro southeast to the Neapoli district, an area of dense apartments and narrow streets below Mount Lycabettus.  Natasha and Sir Stephen followed him, hiding behind newspaper stands or among crowds, and watched as he descended a flight of steps from the sidewalk on Doxapatri Street to enter a building.  Nat pulled her phone out to make a note of their location on the GPS, then sat down on the curb to wait.</p><p>“Are we not going inside?” asked Sir Stephen.</p><p>“Not yet.  We’ve learned everything we can from Neustadt verbally,” Nat told him, “now we want to know what’s in his home.  We’ll watch and wait.”</p><p>So they did – and about an hour later Neustadt reappeared, dressed in a suit and tie.  It looked like it would be horribly uncomfortable to wear in this heat, even now that the sun was down, and Neustadt was fanning himself with a piece of paper as a taxi pulled up.  The driver let him in, then drove off to the south, vanishing around a corner.</p><p>“All right,” said Nat.  “<em>Now</em> we go in.”</p><p>Like every other space in Athens, the apartment foyer – small and dimly-lit, with the tile floor cracking – was tiny and cramped by the standards of somebody who’d lived and worked in America.  Europe was a small continent, and people there didn’t feel the freedom Americans did to spread out and take up space.  There were no plants or furniture, since there wouldn’t have been room for any, and the elevator was roped off with a plastic-encased bike lock chain and a hand-made <em>out of order</em> sign.  The only person in the room was a nine-year-old girl sitting on the bottom step of the staircase, playing a hand-held video game.</p><p>“<em>Good evening</em>,” Natasha said to her in Greek.  “<em>Did you see the man in the suit who just left?</em>”</p><p>The girl nodded.</p><p>“<em>Does he live here</em>?” Nat asked.</p><p>The girl just shrugged.</p><p>“<em>Have you seen him before</em>?” Nat insisted.</p><p>“<em>Sometimes</em>,” the girl said.  “<em>Not very often.  He visits the apartment across from my mother’s</em>.”</p><p>Nat managed to get from the girl that her family lived on the third floor, then thanked her and gave her a couple of Euros to buy herself a treat.  With the elevator broken, Nat and Sir Stephen had to climb the stairs to the third floor, which was not in any way pleasant.  By the time they got there, Nat’s hair was stuck to the back of her neck from sweat, and Sir Stephen, who was normally almost immune to environmental discomfort, was flapping the front of his shirt in an effort to cool himself.</p><p>The apartment the man was supposed to have visited turned out to be number 304.  Natasha knocked on the door.</p><p>There was no answer.</p><p>She knocked again, counted to twenty just to be sure, and then pulled out a paperclip and bent it open to pick the lock.</p><p>Natasha was not often surprised, but she <em>was</em> startled to see Neustadt’s apartment.  It was empty.</p><p>It was a tiny place with only three rooms: a kitchen, a bedroom, and a bathroom.  Each had a couple of items placed in front of the windows to make it look as if somebody lived there: some jars or books, curtains, or a framed painting on the wall opposite.  Beyond that, however, there was nothing.  No dishes in the kitchen cupboard, no food in the fridge, no towels in the bathroom.  In the closet a few sets of clothing were hung, and the shorts and t-shirt Neustadt had been wearing earlier were folded on the floor next to his flip-flops.  This wasn’t his home, just a convenient place to change.</p><p>On a door of one of the empty kitchen cupboards was a pink post-it note, on which somebody – presumably Neustadt himself – had written the words, one atop the other:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>MISSED</em>
</p><p>
  <em>ME</em>
</p><p>
  <em>IN</em>
</p><p> </p><p>“Missed me in Athens?” was Sir Stephen’s guess.</p><p>“Could be,” said Nat.  Although if so, why had he cut the message short?  Had somebody interrupted him?  He hadn’t looked like he was in a huge hurry when he caught his taxi.  She reached up to take the note, then changed her mind and photographed it instead.  “It’s not for us.  We didn’t miss him,” she observed.  “It’s for somebody else.  Maybe Desrosiers.”</p><p>“We did indeed mess him,” Sir Stephen said, annoyed.  “You wouldn’t enter until he’d left.”</p><p>“I don’t think he knows that.”  Neustadt hadn’t shown any signs of knowing he was being followed, but then, Barnes on the train hadn’t shown any signs of being a plant.  Or were they not equivalent?  Neustandt was not a homunculus… presumably.</p><p>“I would not be so certain,” said Sir Stephen, echoing her doubts.  “What are we looking for?”</p><p>“Anything,” said Natasha.  She tucked her phone back in her pocket and began opening cabinets.  “Check everywhere.  Bang on the walls, stomp on the floors, look for secret cupboards or hidden spaces, any place where you could store something you don’t want anyone to find.  If you move something, be careful to put it back <em>exactly</em> where you found it in case he returns.”</p><p>“What if we find nothing?”</p><p>“Then we wait,” Nat said firmly.  “If he left a note, he must be expecting <em>somebody</em> to come here.  If it’s Desrosiers, we need to talk to her again, too.”</p><p>They searched the apartment from top to bottom.  Nat didn’t know if she’d <em>expected</em> to find anything, but Sir Stephen was pessimistic about it – and he turned out to be justified.  Other than the decoy décor and the spare clothing, it was entirely empty.  Natasha knocked on the doors of the apartments on either side, and found them occupied by apparently normal people: 303 was home to an old man who lived along with a small terrier, and 305 to a family in which both parents worked while also raising four school-age children.  Nobody from either side could remember ever speaking to the inhabitant of 304, but they were sure somebody lived there.  If nothing else, someone must water the plants on the balcony.</p><p>With all possible leads exhausted, Nat rejoined Sir Stephen in the bedroom.  There was no bed, of course – just a small bookshelf and a chair positioned where they would be visible through the window curtains.  The books were a random assortment of paperback best-sellers from about ten years ago, of no interest at all.  Natasha had flipped through them, and they were all real books rather than hiding places.</p><p>“So he keeps clothes here, and probably gets mail,” she mused, “but if it were a storage space for anything more important, it’s long gone.”</p><p>Sir Stephen sat down on the floor, scowling.  “So we have learned nothing.”</p><p>He clearly expected Nat to take the chair, because Sir Stephen was a very chivalrous person.  Natasha was feeling petty, so she sat cross-legged on the floor facing him instead.  “We’ve learned a lot,” she said.  “We’ve definitely learned enough to pretend we know more than we do, and we might be able to use that to get something out of Desrosiers, or anybody else who turns out to know something about this.”</p><p>“And what if we wait here all night and she never comes?” Sir Stephen asked.  “We will have spent the night sitting around uselessly, while Neustadt flees!”</p><p>He might be right, but Nat wasn’t going to admit it as long as he was using that tone.  “What would <em>you</em> rather do?”</p><p>“I would rather he never have even left the restaurant,” said Sir Stephen.  “We should have made him give us answers before we allowed him to walk away, and Desrosiers as well!”</p><p>“Sharon explained to you why we can’t do that,” Nat said.  “We don’t have any authority outside the UK.  Even if we did, we don’t have anything solid to charge them with, just suspicions.”</p><p>“And what if they are both, as we suspect, murderers?” Sir Stephen demanded.</p><p>“Then we have to prove it,” said Nat.  “If that wasn’t how it worked, then <em>anybody</em> could say, <em>that guy’s a murderer</em>, and just pound a confession out of him whether he actually did it or not.  That’s how the witch trials happened.”  Not that such things <em>didn’t</em> happen in the modern world, of course… but either way, who was Nat to lecture anyone about it?  She’d pounded confessions out of a number of people, most of whom she’d known nothing about.  She’d just done what she was told.</p><p>“Anyway,” she said, “if we follow Neustadt and he <em>does</em> notice, he’ll try to hide from us.  Right now he seems to think he can <em>use</em> us, and I like that much better because it lets us keep talking to him.”  Practicalities were much more her style.</p><p>Nat’s phone rang.  She recognized Sharon’s number, and picked it up.  “Hi, Sharon?”</p><p>“Oh, good, you’re alive!” Sharon said.  “Where <em>are</em> you two?  We waited for you in the restaurant but you never came back, so we went back to the hotel.  I didn’t want to call in case you were in a tight spot, but I couldn’t wait anymore.”</p><p>“Sorry,” said Nat.  Between searching the apartment, questioning the neighbours, and bickering with Sir Stephen, she’d completely forgotten that the others would probably want them to check in.  “We’re at an address in Napoli.  We’ve got reason to think Desrosiers might turn up here.”  She explained what they’d found.  “Did you talk to General Fury?”</p><p>“Yes,” Sharon said.  “He’s gonna see if he can get us a copy of the Voynich manuscript, although he’s not sure it’ll do us any good.  The best cryptographers in the world have been trying to decode it for a hundred years and nobody’s managed it yet.”</p><p>“We already know things they didn’t, though,” Nat said.  Neustadt had, after all, mentioned multiple codes.  “Anything else?  What about that place in Australia?  Or Kotor?”</p><p>“Fury promised to call somebody in Australia and find out, but as best we can tell from Google Maps it’s a shack in the middle of nowhere.  As for Kotor, he says that’s a trap.  I told him we <em>know</em> it’s a trap, we’re trying to figure out whether it’s worth springing it, and he said he’ll look into that, too.”</p><p>“All right.  Keep me posted,” said Nat.</p><p>“One other thing,” Sharon added.  “He says he’s got copies of some of those Newton writings, and he’ll courier them to us.  We should expect the package at the hotel tomorrow morning.”</p><p>“Then call me back when they get there,” Nat instructed.  “We’ll stay here, and if Desrosiers doesn’t turn up by sunrise, we’ll come back to have a look.”</p><p>There was an air conditioner in the bedroom window, but it didn’t work.  Nat and Sir Stephen, sitting in the middle of the bare floor, had to try to keep cool by fanning themselves with papers or their hands while they passed the time by playing a couple of games of Beat Your Neighbour.  The cards were a pack bought from a souvenir vendor in the street outside – they had erotic scenes from ancient pottery on the backs, including a very improbable picture of a satyr balancing a cup of wine on its erect penis.  Sir Stephen won both rounds, then sat back and yawned.</p><p>“Sleepy?” asked Natasha.  She’d rarely seen Sir Stephen tired.</p><p>“It’s this heat,” he said.  “It makes one want to sleep at the same time as it is likely to render sleep impossible.”</p><p>“Having to sleep on the floor isn’t going to help,” Nat agreed.  “So who takes first watch?”  One of them would have to stay awake to see if Desrosiers, or anyone else, showed up.</p><p>There was a rap on the window.</p><p>Nat looked up, startled, and could see that Sir Stephen did, too.  They were on the third floor.  How could anyone be knocking on the window?  Could it have been a bird?  A moment later, however, it happened again – three knocks.  No bird could do that.</p><p>Sir Stephen stood first, and picked up the wooden chair that sat under the bookshelf in case he needed a weapon.  He took up a position next to the window.  Nat pulled the curtains back and shone her flashlight directly through the glass, so that she could get a look at whoever was outside while they wouldn’t be able to see <em>her</em> in the glare.  Sure enough, there was a man on the tiny balcony, squinting in the light and raising his hands to show that he was unarmed.</p><p>It was Jim, with his long hair and black t-shirt.  Nat lowered the flashlight so he’d be able to see her, and after blinking a couple of times to clear the spots from his eyes, he recognized her.  He looked surprised – had he been expecting Neustadt?  He knocked on the window again, so Nat undid the catch to let him inside.</p><p>“What are you doing here?” she asked.</p><p>“I… I’m not entirely sure,” Jim admitted.  “I just knew this was the place to come.”</p><p>Maybe he’d been here before, and Neustadt had ordered him to forget about it, Nat thought.  Or maybe he’d been told to come here, but not why.  Or maybe he did, after all, know more than what his creator had told him.  Maybe he’d somehow picked up some information Neustadt hadn’t meant to transmit.</p><p>“What do you want?” Nat asked.  Sir Stephen slowly set down the chair he was holding.</p><p>“I’m not sure of that, either,” Jim said.  “I want help, but I don’t know if you can help me.  I don’t know if <em>anybody</em> can help me.  Mr. Neustadt says he can’t, but maybe Mrs. Flamel can, but I don’t know if she wants to.”</p><p>Nat could guess what the problem might be, but she wanted to hear it from him.  “Explain.”</p><p>He sat own on the chair, backwards, leaning his elbows on the back of it, and took a deep breath as if he were about to try a high dive or sing an aria.  For a moment he didn’t seem to know where to start.</p><p>“I don’t know my name,” he said finally.  “You asked and I said it was Jim because that’s what you called me earlier, but I didn’t <em>know</em> it.  When I try to remember it, there’s nothing there.  I know I’m an art student, and I’m here to see the museums, but I don’t know what school I go to, or what airline I took to get here, or where I live.  I know I was following you around because Mr. Neustadt paid me to, but if you asked me about anything else I’d have to make something up.”  He ran a nervous hand through his hair, which was wet through with sweat.  “I don’t know my parents’ names, or whether I have any siblings.  You don’t think about this stuff minute-by-minute, especially when you’re focused on something else, but now that I <em>do</em> think about it, it’s <em>not there</em>.”</p><p>Just like Barnes, Natasha observed.  Allen had asked him where he was from and he’d said Brooklyn, but he’d had to think about it.  Had he experienced a moment of crisis like the one Jim seemed to be having now?  Or had he dismissed it and moved on?</p><p>“I asked Mr. Neustadt if it were true that he’d, uh, made me,” Jim went on, “and he said yes… that they’ve got these bacteria, I guess, that take up genes from other living things instead of having their own.  They can make a person, but they don’t live very long.  I didn’t believe him, and he said if I didn’t then I could test it, because since I’m made of these I can’t get hurt like a normal person can.  He gave me this.”</p><p>Jim took out a pocket knife and unfolded the blade.  “It took me a while to get up my nerve to do it, but…” he put the blade against his palm, gritted his teeth, and prepared to drive it in.</p><p>Sir Stephen snatched the knife away from him.  “There’s no need to do that,” he said.</p><p>“It goes in and seals right back up!” Jim protested, reaching to get it back.</p><p>“We will take your word for it,” said Sir Stephen.  He folded the knife back up, and gave it to Jim with a warning look.</p><p>Jim put it away.  “So, yeah…” he said.  “Apparently I’m not human, and I’m going to die in a week or so, and… you guys have met other… ones… of me… before?”  He was dreading the answer.</p><p>“We have met other men who looked like you,” said Sir Stephen.  “Upon being strangled they vanished into piles of ash.”</p><p>The chair had one leg slightly shorter than the other three, and it tapped against the floor as Jim shuddered.  “Right.  So… I don’t want that to happen, obviously,” he said awkwardly.  “Mr. Neustadt said he can’t help me live longer, although I don’t know if he <em>meant</em> it or if he just doesn’t <em>care</em>.  At dinner, though, he said something about Mrs. Flamel being more into biology than he is?”  He looked up hopefully.</p><p>“We don’t know,” said Nat honestly.  “We only just learned that any of this is even possible.”</p><p>Sir Stephen, however, got down on one knee to be on eye level with Jim, and put a hand on his shoulder.  “Your name,” he said, “is James.  It has always been James.  Your family called you Buckeye, as did I.  You were the son of a Cornish knight, a thousand years ago, and you died in battle with Count John the Red Death, a treacherous ally of William of Normandy.  Your body fell into a crevasse, and it was there that this Neustadt found it and used it to make homunculi to do his bidding.”  He gave the shoulder a gentle squeeze.  “I am Sir Stephen of Rogsey, and you are my friend.  You have been my dearest friend for a very long time, and never failed to help me when I was in need.  Now I will help you.”</p><p>He stood up again, and turned to look at Natasha.  “Neustadt spoke of the Philosopher’s Stone as an engine that can transmute matter into other forms,” he said.  “Do you think it could transmute this elixir into human flesh?”</p><p>Natasha hadn’t thought of that, and she had no idea whether it would work or not.  “I don’t know why you keep asking me,” she said.  “I don’t know any more about this than you do.”  She was unavoidably reminded, though, of how she’d worried that both Allen Jones and Sir Stephen himself would disappear when the group got rid of the Holy Grail that had created them.  Jim had it even worse.  He’d come with a ticking clock already hanging over his head.</p><p>“Madame Desrosiers must know,” Sir Stephen decided.</p><p>“Doesn’t mean she’ll actually do anything about it,” Nat observed.  Neustadt had said she was selfish, and they knew she’d only healed Clint because he got hurt trying to help her.  “We’re actually waiting for her.  We think Neustadt left her a note here,” she told Jim, “but if she hasn’t turned up by the morning, we’ll have to go.  We need to figure out which of these two alchemists is the one who destroyed the mummy, and have him or her taken back to the UK to face charges.”</p><p>Jim lowered his head in disappointment, but he nodded.  “Can I wait with you?”</p><p>That might not be a good idea.  For all they knew, Neustadt had sent him here as a spy.  Then again, it would at least allow them to keep an eye on him.  “I guess,” said Nat.  “Don’t be too disappointed if she doesn’t show, though.”</p><p>“That’s fine,” said Jim.  “Thank you.  Even if you can’t do anything, thank you anyway for trying.  I don’t want to die.”  He sighed heavily.  “I don’t know if I really want to <em>live</em> when I don’t even know who I am and it sounds like I’m not anybody… but… I know I don’t want to <em>die</em>, and that only leaves so many options.”</p><p>“To live is always better,” said Sir Stephen.  “But if you must die, die heroically, and not ignominiously falling apart.”</p><p>Jim gave him a sideways look.  “Do you always talk like that?”</p><p>“He does,” said Natasha.  “He’s a knight from a medieval poem, brought to life by the Holy Grail, so he hasn’t quite caught up on the twenty-first century yet.”</p><p>“Oh,” said Jim, unsure what to do with this information.</p><p>“I’m a former Russian spy,” Nat added with a smile.  She wondered if Jim believed her.  “Now I teach archaeology at a university in Scotland.”</p><p>He just blinked at her.</p><p>“We’re weird people,” she said.</p><p>“I can kinda tell,” Jim said carefully.  “What about this Buckeye guy?  What was he like?”  He turned back to Sir Stephen.</p><p>Sir Stephen’s face lit up in a smile.  He loved to talk about his old life, and particularly about the people he’d known then.  “Buckeye was my friend from when I was very small,” he said.  “I still have a lock of his hair that I keep.”  He’d once had it in a medieval pendant, but had since bought a modern locket.  He pulled it out of his shirt and opened it to show Jim the curl of hair inside – the same dark brown as Jim’s.  “You see, I grew up in an Abbey.  My mother had fled her husband and put out to sea, hoping to reach Wales…”</p><p>Nat shook her head.  Sir Stephen would be going on half the night now, but it would make <em>him</em> happy, and Jim was already nodding eagerly, hoping to find something he could latch onto as an identity of his own.  For however long this lasted, Nat’s own presence would be irrelevant.</p><p>“I’m gonna go get us a pizza,” she decided.  “I’ll be back in maybe twenty minutes.”</p><p>When she returned, Sir Stephen was halfway through telling Jim about the time Buckeye had carried him back to the Abbey after Stephen stepped in a rabbit hole and twisted his ankle.</p><p>“He joked that were I to grow any heavier, he would have to set me down and cut my throat, as he’d do for an injured horse,” Sir Stephen said.</p><p>“That’s a horrible thing to say to your friend!” Jim protested.</p><p>“It was a longstanding joke between us,” Sir Stephen explained.  “I knew he would never have proposed it seriously, unlike some of the crueler boys.”</p><p>Jim shrugged one shoulder.  “Go on,” he said.</p><p>Sir Stephen talked until long past midnight, after the pizza was gone and several bottles of sparkling water had chased it down while they waited for the evening to cool – which it never did.  While the men talked in the bedroom, Natasha went and sat on the kitchen counter, waiting for Desrosiers, or whoever else Neustadt had been expecting, to arrive.  Time passed.  Nat could go a couple of days without sleep if she had to, but she hadn’t had to in a very long time now.  Besides the voices in the bedroom, the only sound in the apartment was that of traffic on the streets outside, which was a noise she’d always found soothing.</p><p>She might as well try to grab some sleep, she decided… if anybody came into the kitchen, they would wake her anyway.  Even when Natasha <em>did</em> sleep, she never slept <em>well</em>.</p><p>Nobody did try to enter the room that night, and Nat woke in the morning to her phone jingling to tell her she had another text message.  It was from Sharon.</p><p><em>Our stuff is here</em>, it said.</p><p>A moment later, a second line appeared.  <em>Some of it.  Apparently what are called Newton’s ‘apocalyptic’ writings were bought from Sotheby’s by a Polish guy named Maslanka.  He’s spent the last ten years or so in Santorini.</em></p><p>Santorini, Nat recalled, was the island with the blue-domed churches that appeared on all the calendars and postcards.  She'd never been there, but it was an extremely popular tourist destination.  She texted back: <em>sounds nicer than Kotor.  We’ll be right over</em>.</p><p>Having learned their lesson yesterday about walking in Athens, Nat, Jim, and Sir Stephen caught an air conditioned bus back to the hotel.  They arrived to find the rest of the group having breakfast in the dining room, and passing around several books.  One was a modern, softcover-bound facsimile of the Voynich Manuscript.  The others were a biography of Sir Isaac Newton, and a hardcover volume called <em>Alchemy According to Newton</em>, a summary of his magical and alchemical beliefs written up as a PhD student’s thesis.</p><p>“Hi, guys,” said Nat, sitting down in the only empty chair, next to Allen.  Sir Stephen and Jim grabbed chairs from the next table over.</p><p>“Morning, Ginger Snap,” said Allen.</p><p>Sam swallowed his mouthful of ham and cucumber sandwich and pointed at Jim.  “What’s he doing here?”</p><p>“He is in need of help,” said Sir Stephen.  “He came to us in the hope that we can provide it.  I will not turn him away.”</p><p>“Because it’s not like the last two or three of him tried to kill us or anything,” Sam observed.</p><p>“Actually, the ones on the train only fought back when we tried to stop them,” Nat pointed out, “and Neustadt said the one at Guedelon was only after Desrosiers, and attacked us when it thought we were protecting her.”</p><p>“I’m not going to hurt anybody,” Jim said.  “At least, I don’t <em>feel</em> like I am.  I don’t <em>want</em> to.”  He looked worried.  It seemed to have occurred to him that maybe Neustadt could control him from a distance, or had perhaps implanted some kind of hypnotic suggestion.</p><p>“We won’t let you,” Nat said, to reassure both him and the others – she'd noticed Cline rubbing his side again.  "If you try, Neustadt did tell us how to stop you.”  Pressure on the hyoid bone, he’d said.  Nat had been taught as a child that pressing on the hyoid could inhibit the vagus nerve and stop the heart, killing somebody instantly, but the results were highly dependent on just where the nerve was in a particular individual.  Maybe the homunculi all conformed to some sort of strict anatomical layout.</p><p>“If you’re a product of alchemy, yourself, maybe you can shed some light on this.”  Sharon offered him a packet of the papers Fury had sent them.  “Whether we’re going to Kotor or Santorini or even back to England, we need to do some research first.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Desrosiers Returns</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Natasha, Sir Stephen, and Jim grabbed some breakfast for themselves, and the group passed the books around to study them.  While the others were understandably more interested in the Newtonian and Hermetic writings that could actually be <em>read</em>, Nat found herself drawn to the Voynich Manuscript.  The alphabet looked a bit like Sanskrit and a bit like Thai, but was nothing she could understand.  She decided to ignore the text, and examined the illustrations.</p><p>She remembered that the prevailing theory was the manuscript was a book of medicine or botany, possibly both.  Nat could see where that idea had come from – many of the pages bore drawings of plants with exaggerated flowers and roots.  Most of them were unidentifiable, although she thought she recognized a water lily leaf in one illustration, and something that might have been rosemary in another.  This could certainly be some kind of medieval pharmacopeia.</p><p>Another section was illustrated not with plants but with drawings of naked women bathing.  Some of them were possibly supposed to be pregnant, while others were sliding down tubes and climbing in and out of tubs.  Maybe those represented Madame Desrosiers’ healing elixir, made of tiny organisms that entered the body and patched it so that it could repair itself.  Or maybe they were Neustadt’s homunculi, artificially produced humans who lived and died in a few days.</p><p>A third ‘chapter’, if that were the right word, seemed to be astronomical.  It was full of circular drawings and diagrams, some of them spread over multiple pages, labeled with the signs of the zodiac.  Some were fairly straightforward, others seemed abstract, still more were rings within rings of heaven knew what, resembling nothing so much as mandalas in a colouring book.  They might mean almost anything, but in light of what Neustadt had said yesterday, Nat found herself wondering if they were technical diagrams.  The Philosopher’s Stone was supposed to be some kind of nuclear reactor.  Fusion reactors, as science was currently exploring them, were made in rings and spheres.  Could this be a plan of such a thing, disguised to keep the secrets from those who weren’t initiated?  Those without the <em>key</em>?</p><p>“Who knew Newton was such a kook?” asked Sam, pushing the book aside.  “This stuff is crazy.”</p><p>“What’s it say?” asked Sharon.</p><p>“<em>The balance of Libra allows the stone to come to its full perfection in the furnaces of Hephaestus</em>,” Sam read aloud.  “<em>The venom of Scorpio destroys it</em>.  This guy discovered gravity?”</p><p>“Technically gravity didn’t need to be discovered,” said Nat.  “Newton just quantified it.”</p><p>“Do his words mean anything to you?” Sir Stephen asked Jim.</p><p>Jim shook his head.  “If you want to make the Philosopher’s Stone, do it in October?” he guessed.  “I dunno.”  He turned a page in the book <em>he’d</em> been looking through.  “Here he’s talking about seeking the divine through chemistry, which I would have figured involved more cannabis and less mercury but then, I’m not an alchemist.”</p><p>“How did you know that Libra is in October?” asked Nat.</p><p>“Huh?”  Jim looked at her.  “Libra is… it’s September to October twenty-third, right?”</p><p>“That’s right,” she said, “but how did you know that?  Did Neustadt tell you?”</p><p>“I don’t know.  Doesn’t everybody know that?” asked Jim.</p><p>“I’m sure a lot of people do,” she said, “but Neustadt told us you only know what he tells you to know, so did he <em>tell</em> you the dates of the zodiac, or do you just <em>know</em> them?”</p><p>Jim shrugged again, uncomfortable.</p><p>“Relax,” said Allen, and put a hand on his back, only for Jim to flinch at the touch as if he’d been bitten.  “<em>Relax</em>,” Allen repeated.  “You’re not being tested.  I don’t know how <em>I</em> know half the things I know, either.  I don’t think anybody does.”</p><p>“Yeah, but you’re a… a real person,” said Jim.</p><p>“Actually no, I’m not,” said Allen.  “Natasha made me up because her real father abandoned her.  It was just an accident that I was brought to life.  I’m… still coming to terms with that, I guess.”</p><p>Jim stared at him a moment, then looked at Nat for confirmation or denial.</p><p>She nodded.  “We’re weirdos.  I told you.”</p><p>“Fear not, James,” said Sir Stephen.  “You are my friend whether you remember me or not.  I will not abandon you.”</p><p>“Yeah, we’ll look after you,” Allen agreed, and Nat felt something twinge inside her.  Why was Allen promising to take care of <em>Jim</em>?  He had a reason to want to look after <em>Nat</em>, since he felt it was somehow up to him to make up for the real parents who hadn’t loved her enough to raise her.  Was it because she didn’t want to tell him about her past?  Did he think he had to find a different surrogate child?  Was it because the only things he <em>knew</em> about her past was that it was terrible, while Jim safely had no past at all?</p><p>That emotion probably deserved some analysis, but for the moment she didn’t get the opportunity.  One of the hotel employees approached the table and said, “excuse me, are you Dr. Jones?”</p><p>“Yes,” said Nat, quickly forcing her expression into neutrality.  “What can I do for you?”</p><p>“You have a message,” the man said, and gave her a postcard.</p><p>It had a picture of Guedelon Castle on it, and an address – Nat recognized the latter immediately as Neustadt’s empty apartment in Neapoli.  The message said simply, <em>I’ll tell you if it’ll make you stop following me</em>.  There was no stamp or postmark.  It had been hand-delivered.</p><p>Nat scowled.  Apparently if they’d stayed at the apartment just a few minutes longer they probably would have met Helene Desrosiers when she arrived.  Now that she was evidently there, however, they had to go – having missed the woman once, they could not afford to miss her again.</p><p>“What is it?” asked Sam.</p><p>“Desrosiers,” said Nat.</p><p>Taking the Metro across Athens <em>again</em> was excruciating, not just because of the heat and the crowds, but because of the worry about what they’d find when they arrived.  Maybe Desrosiers really was willing to talk to them… but given her behaviour last time they’d met, that didn’t seem likely.  The postcard was probably some kind of trap, like Neustadt’s proposed trip to Kotor, or at the very least a distraction.</p><p>Nat mulled this over during the train ride, while the others were likewise quiet and thoughtful – and then there was Jim.  He was standing, hanging on to one of the poles to stay upright, and he looked as if it would have needed the support even if the train hadn’t been moving.  When he reached to scrape his hair out of his eyes, his hand was visibly trembling.  Allen and Sir Stephen kept close to him, ready to catch him if he passed out.</p><p>Back at the apartment building, they climbed the stairs to the third floor again and knocked on the door of number 304.  Nat’s hopes were not high.  The best they’d probably be able to do was find some evidence that Desrosiers had been there and gone.  She might well have been watching the building like Natasha and Sir Stephen had watched it the previous evening, waiting for them to leave so she could go in.</p><p>The door opened.</p><p>Neustadt had been dressed in shorts and a t-shirt like a tourist.  Helene Desrosiers had her hair up under a sunhat, and was wearing an elegant blue and white printed dress with elbow-length sleeves.  She saw who her guests were, and breathed an audible sigh of relief.</p><p>Nobody gave any sort of command, but somehow by mutual agreement the entire group pounced.  Sir Stephen and Sam grabbed Desrosiers by the arms and marched her into the bedroom, where the single chair was waiting for her.  Sharon pulled out a set of handcuffs to fasten her to her seat, and the rest of them formed an arc around her, on their guard in case Desrosiers had something up her sleeve to help her escape.</p><p>“What are you <em>doing</em>?” the woman asked.  Their behaviour clearly shocked her.</p><p>“We’re tying you up so we can talk to you and you can’t run away this time,” Natasha replied calmly.  “How did you know we were in the city?”</p><p>“I have friends here!” Desrosiers told them, as much a threat as an answer to the question.  “They know where I am, and they told me you had a homunculus watching you!”  She looked at Jim.  “Did he set you to spy on them, or were they with him to begin with?”</p><p>Nat remembered the café owner’s phone call, ostensibly to his mother… had that been talking in code?  He hadn’t seemed like he’d have the guts.  Desrosiers chose her friends well.  “Neustadt didn’t need a spy, he seemed to figure out why we were here all on his own,” Nat said.  “Why do you want to talk to us now, after you didn’t want to say anything earlier?  I don’t think you <em>really</em> believe it’ll make us go away.”</p><p>For a moment, Desrosiers was silent.  Then she said, “I need to know what he told you.  Neustadt.  What did he say?”</p><p>“Why?” asked Nat.  Neustadt had said Desrosiers was secretive and didn’t like people knowing too much.  Was she planning to lie to them?  Or to tell the truth and then try to kill them all?  If the latter, she would soon find out how hard some of them were to kill.</p><p>“Because I need to know what he’s doing, and now I’ve missed him,” she said.  “He spoke to you in a restaurant yesterday.  What did he say?”</p><p>So <em>missed me in</em> had definitely been for Desrosiers.  “He told us he stole the mummy, and then <em>you</em> stole it from him,” said Nat.</p><p>Desrosiers nodded, her expression one of disgust but not surprise.  “Of course he did.  Did you believe him?”</p><p>“We’re not sure what to believe at this point,” said Sharon.</p><p>“He also said you were the one who murdered the various people who owned the mummy,” Nat added, “as well as your own husband.”</p><p>“I hope you didn’t believe <em>that</em>,” Desrosiers said.  “The Victoria and Albert Museum has an entire file full of my letters, I’m sure.  Look through that, and you’ll see that the only way I’ve ever tried to get my hands on that mummy was by pointing out that it belongs to <em>me</em>, and nobody’s ever listened to me.”</p><p>“<em>And</em> he said you were going to destroy the key to decoding the Voynich Manuscript,” Nat finished.</p><p>Again, there was a brief pause before Desrosiers decided how to answer, but this time for a different reason.  “Now… <em>that</em> I would do, if I could,” she said, “but only because it needs doing.  You don’t understand how dangerous the Philosopher’s Stone is.  It’s not a pretty little relic you can hide away in the dungeons of Hogwarts.”</p><p>“No, we don’t understand,” Nat agreed.  She sat down on the floor at Desrosiers’ feet, just out of kicking range, and looked up at her.  The idea was to elicit subconscious sympathy, to <em>suggest</em> begging without actually doing so.  “You had a chance to explain it to us, but you didn’t.  Do it now.  Tell us what the hell is going on, because our job is to know what’s going on and you’re making that really hard.”</p><p>“After how you’ve treated me, I don’t think I have to tell <em>you</em> anything,” Desrosiers said stiffly.  “As I understand you people, your job is to keep the world safe from ancient magic and cursed tombs and whatnot, and the easiest way you can do that right now is to keep out of my way and let me do <em>my</em> job.”</p><p>“What <em>is</em> your job?” asked Sam.  “Besides annoying museum directors.”</p><p>Desrosiers didn’t answer.</p><p>“What about me?” Jim tried.  “Don’t <em>I</em> deserve to know what this is all about?”</p><p>Desrosiers looked up at him, and for a brief moment Natasha saw her expression change.  The anger and resentment subsided, and in their place was… pity, perhaps.  Interesting.</p><p>“I don’t know if there’s much good it will do you,” Desrosiers said.</p><p>“Have <em>you</em> ever made a being such as he?” Sir Stephen asked.</p><p>“A long time ago,” Desrosiers said.  “Only once or twice.  I couldn’t bring myself to do it again, not when I knew the poor creatures wouldn’t last.  Paracelsus himself eventually refused to make more homunculi, and he was the one who invented them.  He said it was an evil act to create a thing with a mind but no soul, who could only live a short while and never know God.  I may not believe in God,” she said, “but I know it’s just cruel to create something that is aware of its own mortality and only lives a week or two.”</p><p>Sir Stephen got on one knee to look her in the eye.  “Can you help him?”</p><p>“Help him with what?” Desrosiers frowned.</p><p>“To live longer, of course,” Sir Stephen said.</p><p>“I don’t want to die,” Jim agreed.</p><p>Desrosiers looked up at Jim again.  “If I do, will you let me go?”</p><p>“We’re infinitely more likely to,” said Sir Stephen.</p><p>“But you also have to answer our questions,” Nat put in.  “We can’t let you run off on us again.”</p><p>“I see.”  Desrosiers gave a sigh of defeat.  “What do you want to know?”</p><p>Natasha had so many questions, she wasn’t sure where to begin.  Fortunately, Sharon was there.  She’d brought her digital recorder, and she had a procedure for questioning, inherited from her police work.</p><p>“Let’s start at the beginning,” she suggested, turning the recorder on.  “What’s your name?”</p><p>That shouldn’t have been a difficult question, but Desrosiers looked like she had no idea how to answer it.  “What qualifies as my name?” she asked.</p><p>“How about the one your parents gave you,” said Nat.  “Neustadt said you were Perenelle Flamel.  Is that your real name?”</p><p>“No,” Desrosiers sighed.  “No, my name is…” she paused, thinking about it, as if it had been so long she wasn’t sure she remembered it.  “The modern equivalent would be <em>Phuong</em>.  I was an alchemist at the court of Chungsuk.  The Yuan let women study alchemy, but by that time it was a bit of a dying art.  The old masters who’d sought the secrets of nature were gone, and all that were left were a bunch of herb-grinders.”</p><p>Her voice was wistful.  Natasha didn’t know as much East Asian history as she did European and American, but she suspected anybody talking in that tone about Mongol-ruled Korea was looking through very rose-tinted glasses indeed.</p><p>“I went travelling to look for somebody who could teach me more,” Desrosiers went on, “but in China there was just more of the same.  The original Immortals were dead or in hiding, and the living alchemists were herbalists who knew what to do but not <em>why</em> they did it.  They told me that further west there were nothing but demons and barbarians, but I went on with the silk traders to see for myself.  Turned out there weren’t any demons, just people… as if <em>those</em> aren’t bad enough,” she snorted.</p><p>Sam had snorted, too, but quickly quieted himself.  “Sorry, that was just very Terry Pratchett of you.  Go on.”</p><p>“It took years, but I found my way to Europe, and there were <em>finally</em> people who still wanted to know how the universe worked,” Desrosiers said.  “I met Nicolas in Paris, and he was the first to agree to teach me – everybody else had refused because I was a woman, or a foreigner, or both.  The two of us decoded the Book and created the Philosopher’s Stone together.”</p><p>“Did you marry him for his money?” asked Nat.</p><p>Desrosiers glared at her.  “I married him because he and I loved each other!  We had two children,” she added.  “I haven’t seen either of them in seventy years but they always turn up sooner or later.  Then Nicolas, who could have lived forever, was murdered for the Key, but he had enough warning to hide it in the mummy.  I have spent a hundred and fifty years trying to get the key back, and now it’s in the hands of Neustadt!”  She looked at the six members of the CAAP as if this were their personal fault.</p><p>“And who is Neustadt?” asked Sharon.  “That’s the only name we’ve heard for him.  Who is he, and how old is he?”</p><p>“You really haven’t figured that out?”  Desrosiers looked honestly surprised.  “He left me a note signed with his initials.  You were here, you must have seen it.”</p><p>Nat recalled the post-it, which had seemed to end in mid-sentence: <em>missed me in</em>.  <em>Missed me</em> was a statement in itself, so the initials must be I. N.  <em>N</em> obviously stood for <em>Neustadt</em> – she really should have recognized that at once – so <em>I</em> must be his given name, and <em>Neue Stadt</em> was German for…</p><p>“New Town,” said Natasha out loud.  God <em>damn</em>.  They’d <em>talked</em> about him, read his books, used his name, and she’d never made the connection!</p><p>One by one, the others figured it out as well.  “You’ve got to be kidding,” said Sam.  “Are you telling us that the man who bought us dinner yesterday was <em>Sir Isaac Newton</em>?”</p><p>“Yes,” said Desrosiers.  “That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”</p><p>Natasha looked around at her companions, and found them all stunned and unsure of how to respond to this.  She wasn’t sure, herself – was this good news or bad?  It was nice to know who their suspects were, but Newton had gone down in history as one of the greatest minds humanity had ever produced.  That might not bode well for their chances.</p><p>“Okay.”  She took a deep breath.  “Assuming that Newton <em>did</em> take the key, he’s obviously going to decode the book and make the Philosopher’s Stone.  What does he want it for?”  She knew what answer she <em>expected</em>, but it was probably best to be sure.</p><p>“That’s the trouble,” said Desrosiers.  “Most people would be happy to just fill their coffers with gold and go home, but Neustadt thinks he can transmute his own body and become a god or something.  I’ve never understood his ramblings.  Frankly, I don’t think he ever recovered from his bout of mercury poisoning.  But it doesn’t matter,” she decided, sitting up straighter.  “Whatever he wants to use it for, the Philosopher’s Stone is incredibly dangerous.  If you just follow the instructions in the book, you get a reactor of enormous power that is incredibly difficult to control.  It was only by good luck that Nicolas and I didn’t destroy ourselves in our first test!  By the second we had figured out what precautions we had to take to contain it, but history is littered with people who were not so wise as us!”</p><p>“Like who?” asked Nat.</p><p>“Perhaps you’ve heard of Thira, the volcano that’s supposed to have inspired the legend of Atlantis?” Desrosiers asked.</p><p>Nat nodded once.  “Santorini.”  Where that Maslanko fellow lived.</p><p>“There was no eruption, just a fool who made the Philosopher’s Stone and couldn’t keep it contained,” Desrosiers told them.  “I’ve been there, and I recognize the signs.  Or perhaps Tunguska, in the early 20<sup>th</sup> century?”</p><p>“That’s supposed to have been a meteor,” Sam objected.</p><p>“Yes, and they’ve had to come up with ever-more-contrived explanations for why they’ve never found a crumb of it,” said Desrosiers.  “That was Rasputin, and it was lucky for him that he wasn’t in his laboratory when his apprentices got it started!  Not lucky for the imperial family, of course,” she admitted.  “If Neustadt tries to make the stone without the proper precautions, the same thing will happen, a blast equal to several nuclear bombs.  If you people want to save the world, you certainly want to avoid <em>that</em>.  And if he’s dead because he jumped into the damned thing, you won’t even be able to arrest him for it!”</p><p>So that was why she didn’t want the world knowing the secrets of alchemy, Nat thought – interesting that Newton hadn’t mentioned it.</p><p>“So why don’t you just tell him that?” asked Sam, who was generally the group’s voice of common sense.</p><p>“I have.  He doesn’t believe me,” said Desrosiers.  “He thinks I’m just trying to keep him from becoming a god.”</p><p>“You were pretty selfish about your healing bacteria back there,” Sam pointed out.</p><p>“I healed your friend.”</p><p>“You <em>could</em> heal millions of other people, but you don’t.”</p><p>“It would become something people fight over, and I don’t want that,” said Desrosiers.  “I would rather nobody have it than it be the sole property of the rich, or parents refuse it to their children because it’s <em>not natural</em>.”</p><p>Both those scenarios actually seemed very plausible, but that was beside the point right now.  “Newton told us to go to Montenegro to get something he left there,” she said.  “What is it?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” said Desrosiers.  “He’s got things stashed all over Europe and northern Africa, but when he’s <em>not</em> trying to destroy anything I don’t pry into his business.  I’m not as interested in him as he thinks I am.  I have better things to do than feud.”</p><p>Natasha didn’t think <em>that</em> was quite true, either – the two of them certainly took great pains not to be like one another, whether in philosophy, dress, claimed nationality, or just about anything else.  “If he’s leaving Athens, where will he go?  He mentioned Australia.”</p><p>“It wouldn’t surprise me,” said Desrosiers.  “He’s always liked having criminals for followers, because if they don’t do what he likes he can simply turn them in.”</p><p>“Let’s get back on topic,” said Sharon.  “I want to be clear about this.  Madame Desrosiers, Neustadt told us that <em>you</em> stole the mummy to destroy the key, and were responsible for the deaths of its previous owners.  You’re saying <em>he</em> took it in order to make the Philosopher’s Stone, and <em>he</em> murdered those people.”</p><p>“Yes, exactly,” Desrosiers said.</p><p>“So why should we believe you over him?” Sharon wanted to know.</p><p>“Because unlike Neustadt, I am telling the <em>truth</em>,” Desrosiers insisted.  “I want him dealt with more than anyone, but the only person capable of that is me, and if you get involved you’ll only be in terrible danger, yourselves.  You saw me heal your friend.  Why would I have done that if I had any but the best of intentions?”</p><p>“Maybe to keep us quiet,” said Nat.  “Maybe to distract us, or even discredit us… who would believe us if we said that happened?  Maybe your elixir <em>will</em> take over his body and make him your zombie slave.”</p><p>“You’re impossible!” Desrosiers groaned.</p><p>Clint raised his hand.  “I just want to say that I am <em>not</em> on board with the zombie slave plan,” he said.</p><p>“All I want is knowledge,” said Desrosiers.  “I wanted, and I still want, to know the deepest secrets of how the universe and the living body work.  I’ve never wanted wealth.  If I did, I would have it.  If I wanted to kill you, I could have done so, but I saved your friend’s life instead.  What more do you need from me?”</p><p>“You obviously wanted immortality, too,” said Nat.  “I mean… you’re still alive.”</p><p>“Nobody wants to die,” said Desrosiers.  “Even those who think they do.  Attempted suicides who survive always talk about how they realized in their last moments that death was not the answer.  I’m no different from anyone else that way.”</p><p>“Neither am I,” said Jim.</p><p>He must have felt that he’d waited long enough through everybody else’s questions, and now it was his turn.  He gently pushed his way to the front of the small group, and stood there a moment trying to figure out what to say next.  For a moment he looked like he might bend down to look Desrosiers in the eye, but then he changed his mind and straightened up instead.  He folded his arms across his chest, then decided against that, too, and let them hang down at his sides.</p><p>“Can you help me?” he asked.</p><p>Desrosiers looked him over skeptically.  “You’re just like the rest?” she said.  “Quickly made and quickly discarded?  He hasn’t done anything special with you?”</p><p>“Not that I know of,” said Jim, “but I want to live, too.”</p><p>“I suppose you do,” Desrosiers said.  “The elixir duplicates everything the original DNA coded for, and that will include your survival instincts.  I’ll try my best, but you have to let me go back to my own hotel and prepare some things, <em>without</em> following me or being watched.  I don’t trust you.  It’s not personal,” she assured the group.  “I don’t trust anybody.”</p><p>“If we don’t follow or watch you, how do we know you’ll come back?” asked Nat.</p><p>“You have my word,” said Desrosiers.  “That’s all I can offer.”</p><p>“What if you were to leave something valuable of your own with us?” Sir Stephen suggested.  “Something you <em>must</em> come back for?”</p><p>“Such as?”</p><p>“Your passport,” was Nat’s idea.  A citizen would be able to travel around the EU without it, but not to Australia, and no matter where she was going it was an important document.</p><p>Desrosiers thought about it.  “All right, I can do that.  It’s in my purse.  If you’ll free my hands, please.”</p><p>Somewhat reluctantly, Sharon unlocked the handcuffs, and Desrosiers found her passport and gave it to Nat.  It was an ordinary French one, with a dark red cover and the words <em>Union Européenne; République Française</em> on it.  When Nat opened it, the information inside described the holder as Helene Desrosiers, age thirty-seven, born in Seoul.  It was a fake, of course – anybody who wanted to live forever would have to know how to get fake ID – but it was a very well-done one.  Hopefully getting another copy would be enough of a headache that Desrosiers would prefer to come back for this one.</p><p>“All right,” said Nat.  “Go.”  She hoped they weren’t making a terrible mistake.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. On to Santorini</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Desrosiers checked her watch.  “I’ll be back in two hours – ten past two in the afternoon.  Wait here.”  She appeared to set an alarm, then took her purse and hurried out.  The door shut behind her.</p>
<p>Sir Stephen shook his head as he watched her go.  “We’ll never see her again,” he predicted.</p>
<p>“Maybe not.”  Nat looked down at the French passport in her hands.  They already knew that <em>Helene Desrosiers</em> was not this woman’s real name.  How much would this piece of ID really mean to her?</p>
<p>“Do you think anything <em>she</em> told us is the truth?” Sam asked.</p>
<p>“I don’t know.  I think probably <em>part</em> of what she said was true, and <em>part</em> of what Neus… what Newton said, as well,” Nat decided, sliding the passport into her own purse.  The idea that they’d spoken to <em>Sir Isaac Newton</em> without realizing it was going to take a while to digest.  Was she even sure <em>that</em> was true?  Was Desrosiers trying to turn them against her rival, suspecting that they may have read his strange writings?  Was <em>Neustadt</em>, with his apartment in <em>Neapoli</em>, just a coincidence?</p>
<p>“So what do we want to do next?” asked Sharon.</p>
<p>“I say we leave at once,” said Sir Stephen.  “Kotor is clearly a trap – we cannot go there.  We must go instead to Santorini, to find these other writings of Newton’s.  They may contain some information we can use to have him or Desrosiers arrested.  And we must do it with all haste, before either of them leaves the European Union and can no longer be extradited,” he added with distasted.</p>
<p>“Maybe we can also see what Desrosiers thought were <em>signs</em> that the Philosopher’s Stone had been made there,” Nat said thoughtfully.</p>
<p>“Wait,” Jim protested.  “What if she comes back?”</p>
<p>“I do not believe she will,” said Sir Stephen.</p>
<p>“She said she would be back at ten past two,” Nat checked her own watch.  “We can wait that long, right?”</p>
<p>“What if she’s late?” Jim insisted.</p>
<p>He looked so unhappy, Nat almost wanted to hug him.  Here was this chance he desperately needed and probably wasn’t going to get, and yet he clung to it like a… well, like a lifeline.</p>
<p>“Twenty to three, then,” Nat decided.  “We’ll give her an extra half-hour, but if Newton’s going to end up blowing something up…”</p>
<p>“I understand.”  Jim sighed heavily.  “<em>The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one</em>.”</p>
<p>Nat cocked her head.  “That’s from <em>The Wrath of Khan</em>,” she observed.  Another tidbit of cultural information that Newton probably wouldn’t have outright told him, but which he knew nevertheless.  As if he’d somehow absorbed it through osmosis.</p>
<p>“Please don’t,” said Jim.  “I don’t <em>know</em> how I know it.  It’s like you know how to speak English, I guess… I don’t remember where I learned, I just know.”</p>
<p>“Buckeye would have known how to speak English,” said Sir Stephen.  “Your knowledge may come from his mind.”</p>
<p>“But it would be English like yours,” Nat countered.  “Or even proper Old English, Anglo-Saxon or maybe Old Cornish.  He would at least have an accent.  Jim speaks colloquial American English.”</p>
<p>Sharon cleared her throat.  “Since the ratio of Brits to Americans here is two to one, technically <em>you’re</em> the one with the accent.”</p>
<p>“Of course I have an accent, I’m <em>Rrrr</em>ussian!” said Natasha, in the most exaggerated accent she could manage.  “Anyway, I definitely think Jim has absorbed some kind of general knowledge from his creator, possibly at the same time as he absorbed the language.”  It was interesting that he’d used that as an example, especially when Newton certainly wouldn’t have had <em>time</em> to teach each new homunculus how to talk.  Maybe that would be of some use in understanding Newton’s notes, if they managed to get them.  “I hope Desrosiers does come back – then we can ask her.”</p>
<p>Desrosiers did not come back.</p>
<p>At ten past two, they heard the telephone ring in the kitchen.  Sir Stephen ran to snatch it up, while the rest followed, crowding into the narrow room.</p>
<p>“Hello?” Sir Stephen asked.</p>
<p>Nat reached out and hit the speakerphone button.</p>
<p>“Good afternoon,” said the voice of Helene Desrosiers.</p>
<p>“I knew you weren’t coming back!” said Sir Stephen, but she continued talking as if he hadn’t interrupted.</p>
<p>“It is I, as I’m sure you can tell,” she said.  “I’m sorry I have to break my word, but I cannot stay in Athens.  I must find Neustadt before he can do anything rash.  If you go to room 909 in the Pythagoras Hotel, you will find the door unlocked, and three flasks of elixir in the bathroom.  Have your homunculus consume one flask in the morning on the fifth day since his creation, the second on the tenth, and the third on the fifteenth.  It will extend his life by replacing the cells that are dying.  Beyond that, I’m afraid there’s very little I can do for him.  He was never meant to be permanent.”</p>
<p>There was a click.  It had been a recording.</p>
<p>Sir Stephen put the phone back in its cradle with enough force to nearly pull it off the wall.  “I knew it!” he said.  “Didn’t I tell you so?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, you did,” Nat had to agreed.  Of <em>course</em> Desrosiers had run off.  She probably had a dozen fake passports sitting around, under a dozen different names.  She was probably already out of Greece and on her way to wherever <em>she</em> was going next.</p>
<p>They could still take advantage of her kindness, though.  Natasha looked at Jim.</p>
<p>“Do you want them?” she asked.  “Or… if you’d rather not drag it out…”  Desrosiers had said it was cruel to create him, but it might be crueler still to let him linger as he stewed over his mortality.</p>
<p>He shook his head.  “I want them,” he said.</p>
<p>The Pythagoras Hotel was a very ordinary Best Western located in a narrow retrofitted apartment building, just a couple of blocks from the green oval of Karaiskaki Park.  By the time they arrived, Helen Desrosiers had already checked out, but the clerk told them they were expected and directed them up to her room.  It had not yet been properly cleaned, but she seemed to have neatened up the bed and thrown her trash away before leaving.</p>
<p>Sitting on the counter next to the sink were three brushed metal flasks, the kind people carried liquor in.</p>
<p>Jim picked one up as if afraid it would explode, an unscrewed the top of sniff the contents.  He made a face, but then gathered up all three, and held them against himself as if afraid somebody would steal them.</p>
<p>“So now what?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Well, like Sir Steve said,” Nat looked at the knight.  “If Neustadt really is Sir Isaac Newton, we need the rest of his writings.”  She saw Sir Stephen nod.  “That means we go to Santorini.  I’ll call Fury.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>Fury did not sound impressed when she told him about their plans.</p>
<p>“Where are you gonna stay?” he asked.  “I can’t get you any hotel reservations on Santorini.  Every room on the island is booked at least a year in advance.”</p>
<p>“Then we’ll have to throw ourselves on the mercy of Mr. Maslanka’s hospitaly,” Natasha said.  The group was sitting in the airport lounge, waiting for their gate announcement and passing around bottles of cold water.  “If he doesn’t want us, we’ll improvise.”  Finding safe places to sleep had been part of Nat’s training, and the island’s famously dry climate would help.</p>
<p>“Are you guys <em>sure</em> you’re not just making excuses to take a vacation?” Fury asked.  “You were planning on sightseeing in Cairo, and Athens and Santorini are probably the two most popular tourist destinations in Greece.”</p>
<p>“You can’t see me, but I’m rolling my eyes right now,” said Nat.  “When we’re finished with this, whatever we end up doing with it, we’re gonna <em>need</em> a vacation to recover.”</p>
<p>“As long as the taxpayers aren’t funding it,” Fury told her.  “I’ll get your tickets.  Keep me informed.”</p>
<p>“Will do.”  Nat disconnected, and returned to the rest of the group.</p>
<p>They’d bought Jim a backpack to carry his flasks of elixir, but instead he had them in his lap, sitting on one of the uncomfortable metal benches in a waiting area and staring off into space.  Allen was sitting on one side of him, and Clint on the other, and this time it was Clint who was trying to reassure him.</p>
<p>“I can think of a least one advantage to being an amnesiac,” said Clint.</p>
<p>“An amnesiac is somebody who has memories but forgot them,” Jim said distantly.  “I just don’t have any.”</p>
<p>“Either way,” Clint told him.  “You’ll never have to lie awake at night remembering stupid things you did when you were fifteen.”</p>
<p>Jim blinked a couple of times.  “What?” he asked.</p>
<p>Clint took a swig of his coffee.  “My brother used to know this girl who’s father owned a seafood restaurant in West Bridgford,” he said.  “One night when we’d all been doing some drinking, we decided to go hang out there after hours – she had a key, so she let us in, and we had this <em>brilliant</em> idea that we were going to have <em>lobster races</em>.  We pulled the lobsters out of the tank and marked numbers on them with her nail polish, and you put those little buggers down and they run like hell on ten legs.  Except we never got around to putting them <em>back</em> in the tank, so in the morning the girl’s dad arrived and we’re all passed out under the tables surrounded by free-range lobsters.”</p>
<p>Jim just stared at him.  Sam and Allen did, too.</p>
<p>“Sometimes I still think about that when I’m awake in the middle of the night and it’s like my whole body just goes <em>ugh</em>,” Clint concluded.  “So at least you don’t have to do <em>that</em>.”</p>
<p>“No,” said Jim.  “No, I’m gonna be lying awake at night thinking I’ve got two weeks to live and I’m spending it with <em>these</em> people.”</p>
<p>“Did the lobsters survive?” asked Nat.</p>
<p>Clint shook his head.  “Barney and I had to ring our parents and tell them we weren’t going to be home that day because we had to wash six lobsters’ worth of dishes.”</p>
<p>Nat sat down across from the three men, next to Sharon.  “Fury says we’re allowed to go to Santorini,” she told the, “but he wants us to know this isn’t a vacation, so we’re not allowed to have any fun.”  She wagged a finger.</p>
<p>“Which means we’re going to deluge him with tourist selfies,” Sharon said with a smile.</p>
<p>“As amusing as that would be, probably not,” Nat cautioned.  “We don’t know how much more traveling we’ll have to do, and we don’t want to find our funding cut before we can do it.”</p>
<p>Clint looked astonished.  “We have <em>funding</em>?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Nat said.  “Who knew?”</p>
<p>There were chuckles from various other members of the group, but Jim, with his flasks still in his lap, just turned to look out a window at the planes taxiing past.  Natasha knew exactly how he felt, she realized – he was there in body, but also outside it watching from a mile away, invisible to the people all around him.  She had similar moments of dissociation from time to time, when she found herself in the middle of a faculty dinner or something, carrying on a conversation at the same time as she was somewhere else entirely, marveling at how not one of these people had the faintest idea that she wasn’t who she’d told them she was.  In that moment, she felt very sorry for Jim, indeed.</p>
<p>Then Allen patted him on the back and she bristled again, the sympathy gone.  Before she could get too far into stewing, however, an airport employee approached them.</p>
<p>“You are the UK Committee for the Appraisal of Archaeological Peril?” the man asked.</p>
<p>“That’s us,” said Nat.</p>
<p>“We’ve made space for you on Aegean Airlines flight 361,” he told them.  “This way please.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>The island of Santorini was the sort of destination people saw so many pictures of, it was easy to forget it was a real place.  Postcards, calendars, and advertisements made it look like paradise, with blinding white walls under a deep blue Aegean sky, an intriguing maze of cobbled streets and colourful flowerpots and swimming pools that overlooked cliffs by the sea, with the fluttering Greek flag and the famous blue church domes and windmills to set it off.</p>
<p>The reality was slightly grubbier, in the same sort of way that the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan was never as white as it looked in pictures, and infinitely less hospitable.  The white walls reflected the merciless Mediterranean sun so that looking at the ground was nearly as painful as looking at the sky, and while there were isolated and artificial garden spaces, actual trees were stunted and windblown and provided no shade.  Outside the Kratikos airport, rows of grapevines hugged the earth instead of climbing on trellises, on properties bordered by walls of porous red and black volcanic rock that resembled charcoal.</p>
<p>Clint flapped the front of his shirt as they waited to rent a car.  “Ten minutes here and I’ll fry like an egg,” he complained.</p>
<p>“My pasty Viking ancestors are already cursing me and all my descendants to the tenth generation,” Sharon agreed.</p>
<p>“Good thing <em>somebody</em> remembered to bring sunscreen,” said Sam, his voice heavy with sarcasm as he pulled the bottle out of his bag.</p>
<p>The others, all of them far paler than he, stared at him.</p>
<p>“For your information,” he said, annoyed, “I can sunburn, too, it just doesn’t show as much.”  He opened the bottle and began smearing the scream on his arms and neck.</p>
<p>They passed the sunscreen around and everybody took some.  Nat made sure to apply it to her nose and cheeks, not wanting to break out in freckles.  Sir Stephen tried to refuse, saying it would be a waste, but Sharon wouldn’t let him.</p>
<p>“Take off your shirt,” she ordered.</p>
<p>He pulled it off, and she squirted cream onto his shoulders to rub in.</p>
<p>“There is really no need,” Sir Stephen complained.  “If I’m burned by the sun, it heals like any other of my injuries.”</p>
<p>“Maybe it does, but isn’t it so much better not to get burned in the first place?” Sharon asked.  “Besides,” she added, kissing his cheek.  “This way I get to run my hands all over you in public.”</p>
<p>“Oh, so that <em>was</em> on purpose,” said Sam.  “Can we all have a turn?  I call next.”</p>
<p>“Me third!” said Clint.</p>
<p>“Me fourth!” Jim chimed in.</p>
<p>“Notice how it’s the boys who want to oil him up,” Nat said to Allen.</p>
<p>Sir Stephen himself, who came from a much more sexually conservative world, turned redder and redder as this conversation progressed, until it almost looked like he was sunburned already.  He blushed in his chest as well as his face, which made the reaction even funnier.</p>
<p>With everyone protected from the ferocious sunlight, the CAAP set off for the home of Antoni Maslanka, which Nat had located by some judicious illegal use of ten minutes of wi-fi in the airport at Piraeus.  What they were going to say to him when they arrived was still an open question.  They’d gotten away with a surprising amount of interrogation and a few actual crimes while they’d been following the Red Death earlier in the year, simply by saying they were archaeologists.  Nat wondered whether the same thing would work in Greece where, as the Elgin Marbles illustrated, people took their archaeology far more <em>personally</em>.</p>
<p>The house was in the middle of the island, just below the monastery and cell phone towers that occupied the highest peak.  The view ass they drove up the winding road was spectacular, with the entire Thira caldera spread out below around the black pit of Santorini Crater in the very middle.  A gleaming cruise ship was anchored off shore, with smaller boats coming and going to take people to the island’s attractions.</p>
<p>The whole place was very obviously volcanic, Natasha noted, so what had made Desrosiers so certain there’d been a nuclear explosion here?  Perhaps, she mused, the self-destructing Philosopher’s Stone had set off the volcano.  Maybe the blast had been powerful enough to crack open a magma chamber, and the island had suffered a double disaster.  That was the sort of thing that could definitely inspire tales of lost continents.  Come to think of it, there were volcanoes in Siberia too, weren't there?  The so-called Siberian Traps hadn’t erupted in millions of years, but they indicated a vast reservoir of magma under the crust.  Could there be some kind of connection?</p>
<p>There were two buses full of tourists visiting the scenic outlook at the end of the main road, taking pictures of the vista and buying snacks from a couple of enterprising fruit and beverage vendors who must have to make the trek up from Perissa or Emporio every morning with their wares.  Sharon carefully navigated the group’s rented van between people and other vehicles, and then rounded the peak to Maslanka’s villa.  It was out of sight from the tourist spot, and nearly out of sight from its own gates, hidden behind a stone wall and a row of scrawny olive trees.</p>
<p>They parked outside the wrought iron gate, and Nat went up to press the buzzer.  It was very windy up on top of the hill, though the wind itself was so warm the effect was less like a fan and more like a blow dryer, but over the roaring in her ears she could just barely hear the voices of the others, waiting around the van.</p>
<p>“Ten Euro says he’s been dead for years and nobody’s heard about it,” said Clint.</p>
<p>“You’re on,” Sam nodded.</p>
<p>Static crackled on the speaker beside the buzzer, as if the machine were clearing its throat.  “<em>Can I help you?</em>” a male voice asked in Greek.</p>
<p>“<em>I hope you can</em>,” said Nat.  “<em>I’m Dr. Natalie Jones.  I’m an historian from the University of Dundee in Scotland.  I was hoping I could speak to Mr. Maslanka about his Newton manuscripts</em>.”</p>
<p>“<em>I’m sorry, Dr. Jones</em>,” the doorman replied.  “<em>I’m afraid that’s not possible</em>.”</p>
<p>“<em>May I ask why</em>?”  Nat glanced over her shoulder at Clint.  Did he know something the rest of them didn’t?</p>
<p>“<em>Mr. Maslanka is in Gdańsk, seeing to legal proceedings with his ex-wife</em>,” the doorman explained.  “<em>We don’t know when he is expected back</em>.”</p>
<p>“<em>Do you have a telephone number where we can reach him</em>?” Nat asked.  She’d been taught that authority figures were far more likely to grant a request made in person – if only because they wanted the petitioner to go away – but it was possible Maslanka could give them permission over the phone.</p>
<p>There was a pause.  “<em>Yes</em>,” said the doorman, “<em>but I don’t know if he could let you in even then.  This house and everything in it are contested property in Mr. Maslanka’s divorce.  He might have to ask the court if he could let you in</em>.”</p>
<p>That did <em>not</em> sound promising.  “<em>Give me the number anyway</em>,” Nat decided.</p>
<p>She wrote it down and returned to the van.  Clint and Sam were leaning on opposite sides of the bonnet, fanning themselves with tourist brochures and waiting to hear what she’d learned.</p>
<p>“Is he dead?” asked Clint, maybe a little <em>too</em> eagerly.</p>
<p>“No.  He’s arguing with his ex-wife over who owns the house,” Nat replied.</p>
<p>“Ha!”  Sam pointed at Clint.  “Pay up.”</p>
<p>Clint opened his wallet to give him a ten-Euro note.  Natasha went around him to climb back into the back seat and deliver the news to the rest of the party.</p>
<p>“So now what?” asked Allen.</p>
<p>“We find a phone and call him,” said Nat.  She looked up at the masts on top of the hill.  “You think Fury would be willing to pay my roaming charges?”</p>
<p>They decided the answer was probably <em>no</em>, and returned to the town of Emporio to use a pay telephone, of which the island did still have a few.  The long-distance charges were likely just as expensive as the roaming would have been, but Natasha managed to get in touch with Maslanka’s lawyer – a very tired-sounding woman named Beata Kowalczyk.</p>
<p>“<em>I’m sorry, Dr. Jones</em>,” she said to Natasha in Polish, “<em>but Mr. Maslanka is very busy and he can’t speak to you right now.  I can make an appointment for you… how does next Friday sound?</em>”</p>
<p>Natasha wondered what Ms. Kowalczyk would think if she told her it was an emergency.  The idea of a historical or archaeological emergency seemed ridiculous even to her, and she’d already lived through one of them.  “<em>Thank you</em>,” she said, “<em>I’ll have to look at my schedule.  May I call you back?</em>”</p>
<p>“<em>Of course,</em>” said Ms. Kowalczyk.</p>
<p>Natasha hung up the phone and returned to the gelato booth up the street, where the others were waiting for her.  They all had cones, and as she approached, Sharon offered her one.</p>
<p>“Lemon and raspberry,” she said.</p>
<p>“Thanks,” sighed Nat, taking it.  In the intense Mediterranean heat, it was already melting.</p>
<p>“No luck, I’m guessing,” Sharon added.</p>
<p>“He can talk to us about it next Friday at the earliest,” Nat said.  A drop of gelato fell onto her hand, and she licked it away, only to have more run down the opposite side of the cone when she tilted it.  “So that’s a no.”</p>
<p>Sam began to smile.  “Let me guess… we’re going to steal them, right?”  He looked suspiciously delighted by the idea.  “Because I have an idea!”</p>
<p>“Do you?” asked Nat, and followed his gaze.  He was looking <em>up</em>, at the seabirds who were wheeling above the little market square, waiting for something edible to fall on the ground.  Their adventure with the Holy Grail had left Sam with a very odd talent: as a child, he’d been fascinated by the story of Sir Sigmund, who could understand the language of birds, and the Grail, with its ability to make imaginary things come to life, had granted it to him.  It had already proven useful in his new job at the Eccleshall Raptor Rescue.  Maybe it could help them now.  “I bet you do.”</p>
<p>They ate their gelato as fast as they could, although that still wasn’t fast enough to keep it from melting and getting fruit-flavoured syrup all over their hands and faces, then headed back out of town into the vineyards on the volcanic slopes.  Sam chose a place next to a farmhouse that doubled as a bed and breakfast, and had them pull over there.  He climbed out, walked out into a field, and held up an arm.</p>
<p>Within seconds, two doves and a small falcon had come to perch on him.  He stroked their backs and scratched their necks, and removed a tick from under the falcon’s chin, then began speaking to them in a very serious tone.</p>
<p>“We’re looking for three sets of writings in red leather notebooks, in the big house at the top of the mountain,” he said.  “Sharon!  Do you still have that picture?”</p>
<p>Sharon got out of the van and offered the photograph Fury had sent them – it was taken from the old listing on Christie’s, back when Maslanka had bought them at the auction.  “Here,” she said, holding it out for the birds to inspect – they lowered their heads and the doves turned to get a better view out of their side-facing eyes.  “They’ll have this inside the cover,” Sharon added, flipping to a second picture.  Natasha had seen both, and knew that this second one would have Newton’s name written in looping sixteenth-century script.</p>
<p>“If you find them, you two come back and tell me about it,” said Sam to the doves.  “While you,” he added, to the falcon, “sit on the books and don’t let any humans near them except us.  Do you understand?”</p>
<p>The birds tilted their heads from side to side, as birds did.  Anybody who didn’t know the group and was unfamiliar with the events at the Battle of the Tower, Nat observed, would have thought this man was crazy.  She glanced at Jim, and found him looking back at her with a rather worried expression, as if hoping she would reassure him this was normal.  She just nodded.</p>
<p>“Brilliant.  Go.”  Sam raised his arm.  The three birds took off and flew a couple of lazy circles in the air before they all headed for Maslanka’s house on the peak.</p>
<p>Jim shaded his eyes with one hand as he watched them go, then turned to Sam.  “So, uh… you talk to birds,” he said.  He didn’t sound disbelieving.  Instead, he sounded resigned, as if his life had already become so strange that this man might as <em>well</em> be Dr. Dolittle.</p>
<p>“Yeah,” said Sam with a grin.  He held up his arm to inspect a place where the falcon’s talons had pierced his skin, but he didn’t seem too worried about it.  He rubbed the bead of blood away with his thumb and then opened his water bottle to clean the injury.  “Let me guess, you’re gonna start calling me Snow White or something, aren’t you?”</p>
<p>“I was actually gonna say that’s kinda cool,” said Jim, “but hey, if you want me to call you Snow White, I can definitely do that instead.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. A Thief in the Night</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>While Sam’s birds searched the house, there was nothing much for the humans to do but wait.  They all got back in the van and turned the air conditioning as high as it would go to offset the heat outside.  Sharon had a book of crossword puzzles and Clint played a game on his phone.  Sam drummed his fingers on his knee and scanned the sky.  About fifteen minutes passed, and then Jim suddenly opened the door.</p>
<p>“Sorry,” he said.  “I gotta… I gotta stretch my legs.”</p>
<p>He shut the door behind him and left the road, sliding a few metres down a gravelly slope.  Nat craned her neck to watch.  Was he going to go tell somebody they were here?  Or maybe he was fed up with the uncertainty and the ticking clock hanging over his head, and was going to throw himself off a cliff.  Maybe the sun was too hot for his artificial body, and he was about to dissolve.</p>
<p>The answer appeared to be none of these.  Instead, he just sat down on the edge of an ancient terrace, among a few stunted cherry tomato plants, and stared out to sea.  The water glinted like a mirror under the cloudless sky.  The entire group watched him for a moment, and then Allen opened the door.</p>
<p>“I’m gonna go see if he’s okay,” he announced.</p>
<p>“No,” said Nat.  She reached to snag Sir Stephen’s sunglasses out of their case on the seat.  “You stay here.  I’ll go.”</p>
<p>“But…” Allen began.</p>
<p>“Stay.  Remember what happened with Barnes on the train?” Nat asked.  “If some other programming has kicked in, you won’t be able to handle him.”</p>
<p>She scrambled down the slope to sit on the low wall beside Jim.  He glanced at her as she did, but his only reaction was to heave a sigh and resume staring straight ahead.  Natasha offered him the sunglasses.</p>
<p>“Here,” she said.  “You’ll hurt your eyes squinting in the sunshine like that.”</p>
<p>“I don’t think it matters,” he replied, but he accepted the glasses and put them on.  “Thanks, I guess.”</p>
<p>“You’re welcome,” said Nat.  It seemed he wasn’t following any instructions at all… he just needed some space.  She sat there a little longer, so that the others wouldn’t realize she’d only gone to stop <em>Allen</em> from going.  This was why the Red Room hadn’t let her form emotional attachments to people, she thought, annoyed.  It was because when you were attached to somebody, you behaved irrationally, and sure enough, here she was.</p>
<p>“This is beautiful,” Jim said, gesturing vaguely at the view.  “This is the kind of place people have on their bucket lists.  I guess if I have to die in two weeks, it’s nice that I got to see this.”</p>
<p>“I guess,” Nat agreed… and something in her chest twisted.  She <em>shouldn’t</em> be jealous of Allen wanting to help Jim.  They were both people Nat had inadvertently brought into being, and they were both people who might have to cease to exist in order to save the world.  It was true that she hadn’t directly <em>created</em> Jim the way she had her imaginary father, but she was the one who’d approached him and given him a name in the Acropolis Museum.  It was probably her fault he’d learned what he was.</p>
<p>How could emotions be so damned complicated?  How was it possible to pity and envy somebody at the same time?</p>
<p>“What else would you like to see?” she asked.</p>
<p>Jim thought about it.  “It’d like to see <em>Ben-Hur</em>.  I kind of know about it the way I do about <em>Star Trek</em>, but it’s one of those movies everybody talks about and nobody watches.  I’d like to see an eclipse of the moon, because it’s supposed to turn red and that sounds really cool.  I’d like to ride an elephant.  I probably won’t get to do any of that.”  He sighed.</p>
<p>“We could stream <em>Ben-Hur</em>,” Nat suggested.  “I don’t know if it’s on Netflix but somebody must have it.”</p>
<p>“It’s three hours long, isn’t it?”</p>
<p>“Well, yeah, but we’ve got to rest a bit between alchemist-hunting expeditions.  I’m sure we could find time.”</p>
<p>“I’d like to try ziplining,” Jim went on.  “And I’d like to see a hummingbird up close.  You know, when they hover by a flower and their wings are beating so fast they’re invisible?”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” said Nat.  She’d never seen that, either, except on television.  Did that count?  There was something about the <em>specificity</em> of the image that was really very touching.</p>
<p>“Hey, guys!” shouted a voice from up the hill – it was Sharon’s.  “Sam’s doves are back!”</p>
<p>Jim got up from the wall and held out a hand to help Nat up.  She accepted it, but then he didn’t let go as they climbed the slope back up to the road.  Maybe it was only because they were both slipping and sliding on the gravel and needed help keeping their balance.  It was only when they rejoined the others, gathered around as the two doves landed on Sam’s shoulders and began to coo and preen, that Jim rather reluctantly freed Nat’s fingers.</p>
<p>Sam listened to the birds for a few moments, then looked at the others with a rather sheepish expression on his face.  “Well,” he said.  “It, uh, seems like before they tell us anything, they want to know what’s in it for <em>them</em>.”</p>
<p>“Really?” asked Sharon.</p>
<p>Clint snorted.  “Just like alchemists,” he said.  He dug around in his backpack until he found a baggie containing two halves of a slightly squashed sandwich, which he offered to the birds.</p>
<p>“They wanna know what’s in it,” Sam translated.</p>
<p>“Nutella and strawberry-mango jelly,” said Clint.  He held it out further.  “It’s cut in triangles,” he said, trying to tempt them.  “Everybody knows triangles taste better than squares.”</p>
<p>“Drop it,” Sam said.</p>
<p>“Huh?” Clint asked.</p>
<p>“<em>Drop it</em>,” Sam repeated, enunciating carefully.  He must have thought the breeze was interfering with Clint’s hearing aids.</p>
<p>Clint frowned and let go of his sandwich halves.  They fell in the dust at his feet, and the two doves were on top of them almost before they reached the ground.  There were garbled hooting noises.</p>
<p>“I can’t understand you when you talk with your mouths full,” Sam informed the birds.</p>
<p>They seemed to decide that if such were the case, they simply wouldn’t talk until they’d finished eating.  There was not another sound out of them for quire some time.  Finally their bellies were full, and the two doves settled on a nearby boulder to preen and, apparently, to talk.</p>
<p>“The Newton notebooks are in an upstairs room with a bunch of other antiques and manuscripts the Maslankas own,” Sam explained.  “They left the falcon in there to pretend she’s making a nest out of the couch cushions and shriek at anyone who gets too close.  The servants called the police but there’s not actually any animal control people on the island, and the guy from the mainland can’t get here until tomorrow.  We can go get the books anytime tonight.”</p>
<p>“Perfect,” said Nat.  “Now we just need to find something to do for the rest of today.”  Downloading <em>Ben-Hur</em> might just work.</p>
<p>“Hold it,” said Jim.  “I get that <em>you</em> understand what the birds are saying, but how can the <em>birds</em> understand what the people are saying?  Do birds just understand English?”</p>
<p>“No,” Sam said, “because in case you forgot, we’re in the Greek Islands.  So obviously the birds understand Greek.”</p>
<p>“No, Sharon talked to them, too,” Clint said.  “So did I.  That means they <em>do</em> understand English.”</p>
<p>“So does that mean no matter where I go in the world, the birds can understand what I’m saying even if it’s not the local language?” Jim asked.  “Or is this some magic thing you do?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know how it works,” said Sam.  “I just talk, and the birds listen.”</p>
<p>“A lot of birds migrate,” Sharon pointed out.  “I know there’s birds from northern Europe that spend the winter in north Africa.  Maybe they teach the locals when they pass through.”</p>
<p>“Or,” Nat put in, “as Fury pointed out, this is a major tourist destination.  Maybe they learn it from all the English-speaking people who come to visit here.”</p>
<p>“You know what?” Sam asked.  “I am at least eighty-eight percent sure that Sir Sigmund in the saga never had to think about this!”</p>
<p>Natasha laughed aloud.  On their previous adventure, she’d been constantly annoyed with all the magic that surrounded them and the lack of any logic in it.  Right now, she wasn’t feeling that at all.  Talking to birds probably wasn’t <em>supposed</em> to make sense, and she was okay with that.</p>
<p>“Why don’t we forget it and go back to Emporio?” she suggested.  “We can find somewhere cooler to wait until the sun sets.”</p>
<p>“I’ll drink to that,” said Allen.</p>
<p>“And drink, and drink, and <em>drink</em>,” Clint agreed.  “Maybe even water.  I think it might actually be too hot for coffee.”</p>
<p>“Heavens,” said Nat.  “I think the world is coming to an end.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>It turned out there <em>was</em> nowhere cool in Emporio.  The island’s idiosyncratic architecture, with low buildings and domed roofs designed to use as little valuable wood as possible, meant there was almost no shade.  They did manage to find some bottled water, though, and they crowded under an awning to drink and hold the half-empty bottles against their foreheads and the backs of their necks.</p>
<p>“I think <em>Ben-Hur</em> is out,” Nat said to Jim.  “Even if we find somewhere with wifi, the sun’s so bright we won’t be able to see the screen.”</p>
<p>“I’ll get over it,” he replied, smiling softly.  Then he looked at Clint, who was on his phone.  “Who are you texting?” he asked.</p>
<p>“My wife,” Clint replied.</p>
<p>Jim was startled.  “You’re married?”</p>
<p>“Hell, yes,” said Clint.  “You’ve met me – I need supervision!”</p>
<p>“Any kids?”</p>
<p>“Two and two thirds.”</p>
<p>Jim frowned, even more confused.  “Two thirds?”</p>
<p>“Bun number three isn’t quite out of the oven yet,” Clint explained.  “We were gonna call her Natasha, since we’re pretty sure it was Nat who got me my memory back, but it turns out we’re gonna call <em>him</em> Nathaniel.”</p>
<p>“Little traitor,” Nat declared.</p>
<p>Jim nodded and looked around at the rest of the group.  He was still smiling, rather tentatively, as if he wasn’t sure he was allowed to.  “You guys are all good friends, aren’t you?”</p>
<p>Nat took in the people around her.  She wasn’t as close to Allen as she knew he wanted her to be, or as <em>she</em> apparently wanted to be, if her jealousy of Jim were anything to go by.  She tried to keep in touch with Sharon, and through Sharon with Sir Stephen, although that often didn’t work as well as she would have hoped, either.  Sam, whose work kept him very busy, and Clint, who lived in relative isolation on the family farm in Nottinghamshire, she hadn’t spoke to at all in the month between meeting in London and getting on the Chunnel train.  In spite of all that, though… yes, they were her friends.</p>
<p>“That’s great,” said Jim.  “That’s really great, because it means you’re not just working together, you also get to hang out.”</p>
<p>“Well, this is way more relaxed than our first mission, when we were running around the British Isles looking for a sorcerer,” said Nat.</p>
<p>“Right.  Running around the Mediterranean looking for an alchemist is totally different,” Sam said.</p>
<p>Clint’s phone vibrated, and he held it up for a look.</p>
<p>“What’s she asking you to bring back from here?” asked Nat.</p>
<p>“Looks like Santorini rosé,” Clint said.  “I guess we’d better find a winery.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>They did not manage to find a lace where they could sit and watch <em>Ben-Hur</em>, but they did find a quaint family-run winery that let them sample the wares quite liberally before selling Clint two bottles of rosé, which he carefully wrapped in laundry so they wouldn’t get jostled too badly in his backpack.  Then they went looking for another thing that turned out to be impossible to find, which was a place to spend the night.</p>
<p>As Fury had predicted, every single room on the island was full.  Tourism was Santorini’s only major industry, and even private homes that didn’t advertise room and board nevertheless had foreigners staying in their guest beds.  The CAAP therefore resigned themselves to sleeping in the van, and as the sun went down, they piled back into it and headed up the mountain again.</p>
<p>Halfway there, they pulled off onto a drive that led to one of the vineyards, and parked there so they could hike the rest of the way.  Maslanka’s employees might have noticed a strange vehicle sitting outside the house in the middle of the night.  Even with the sun down, it was a very sweaty and tiring walk, and by the time Nat realized she could have pretended to be from Animal Control on the mainland, they were already at the base of the fence.  Next time, she promised herself, she’d be qucker to think of cover stories.</p>
<p>The wall around Maslanka’s property was made of decorative stone in places where it could be seen from the house.  The rest of it, where they didn’t have to worry about spoiling the view, was chain link, with limp-looking agaves growing at the base of it.  When Nat stopped walking, it was as if the hot evening air turned to jelly all around her.  It was like being in a sauna.  If this were what Santorini was like in October, what in the world was it like in <em>July</em>?</p>
<p>Sam’s doves had flown or hopped along with them the whole way, and now flew around the house to reconnoiter before returning to perch on top of the fence.</p>
<p>“They say it’s the window in the upper corner on the west-facing wall,” Sam said.</p>
<p>She brought up the google maps satellite view of the property.  “Here?” she asked, indicating the place.</p>
<p>The doves cooed, and Sam nodded.  “It’s under a gable,” he said, “and they’ve left it wide open hoping the falcon will leave.  There are a couple of night watchmen patrolling the house but they’re half asleep or on their phones.  I don’t think a lot of crime happens around here.”</p>
<p>“I’m quick and quiet,” Nat promised, “and if I do run into anybody, in a pinch I’m deadly.”</p>
<p>She scrambled over the fence and headed up the hill.  The guards would be near the doors – Nat ignored them, and shimmied up the trunk of one of the short, squat, and mostly dead palm trees that lined the back of the house.  There she found the window just as Sam had described it, and she could just reach it with her legs still wrapped around the tree trunk.  She climbed carefully onto the sill, and peeked in.</p>
<p>The first thing she saw, in silhouette against a white wall, was a man with a crowbar.</p>
<p>Her immediate impression was of him raising the bar to hit something that was on the floor… but that couldn’t be right, could it?  It had to be one of the watchmen, and he would have a gun, not some improvised weapon.  In any event, why would he be raising it to hit a crumpled little shape on the floor that looked like a pile of unwashed socks?</p>
<p>What spurred Nat into motion was realizing that it wasn’t socks, or any other sort of laundry.  On the floor was the little falcon Sam had set to guard the Newton books.</p>
<p>She dived through the window and threw herself at the man.  He hadn’t noticed her, and this time there was barely even a scuffle.  Within seconds, he was flat on his back on the ground, with the crowbar in Nat’s hands instead of his.  He hadn’t even had the opportunity to cry out.</p>
<p>Natasha put a shoe on his throat, careful to keep it below the hyoid bone, and used the end of the crowbar to reach the switch by the door.  She already knew what she would find when the light came on.  Sure enough, it was another homunculus.  This one was short-haired and clean-shaven, dressed all in black for creeping around. </p>
<p>“You’re after the notes,” she said.</p>
<p>“Anything valuable,” he replied, in English but with a Greek accent.  Maybe this one believed he was a local thief, somebody who picked the pockets of tourists and had just seen an opportunity for a jackpot.</p>
<p>“You’ve got a buyer for them already,” Nat guessed.</p>
<p>“A German,” the thief said.  He tried to push her foot off his neck.  Nat raised the crowbar, as if preparing to bash his head in.</p>
<p>“Get out of here,” she ordered, “and tell Neustadt he’s not helping us trust him.”  She lifted her foot.</p>
<p>The thief sprang to his feet and lunged, hoping to take the crowbar back from her.  Nat feinted with it, he ducked, and she kicked him in the teeth instead.  The homunculus staggered back against the door, which broke open and sent him sprawling down the stairs.  Shouts from elsewhere in the house told her the watchmen had heard.</p>
<p>Nat dropped the crowbar and looked around for the books… there they were, sitting on a table – three of them with flaking red leather covers.  A quick check inside the first one showed Newton’s name written there.  She would have scooped them up and fled at once, but then Nat remembered the injured bird on the floor.  The notebooks weren’t very big, but she couldn’t hold them in one hand.  How was she going to carry both them and the falcon?  She couldn’t fight or climb with her hands full, and a bird with a broken wing was probably doomed one way or another…</p>
<p>She put one book down her shirt and tucked the others under her arms, and grabbed the falcon.  It flapped its good wing and shrieked, trying to escape, but it didn’t have enough strength left.  It did have sharp claws, however, and they dug into her hands and arms as she jumped out the window.</p>
<p>From there she slid down the slope of the roof below, and did a somersault in the air so she could land on her feet on the cobblestones.  By some miracle, she managed not to drop the bird <em>or</em> the notebooks.  Panting, but unable to stop and catch her breath, she ran back down the hill towards her waiting colleagues</p>
<p>She was almost there when she realized she could hear the sound of footsteps behind her.  A glance over her shoulder showed the thief following her, crowbar in hand.</p>
<p>Sir Stephen and Jim were at the fence, and when they saw that Nat was being followed, they began waving, urging her to hurry – as if she needed the encouragement.  She lengthened her stride as much as she could, and wished she’d left the bird behind.  Without it, she could have thrown the books over the fence ahead of her.  Instead, she had to throw the falcon itself.</p>
<p>“Catch the bird!” she shouted.</p>
<p>“The bird?” Sir Stephen asked.</p>
<p>Once airborne, the falcon flapped and screamed, trying to fly, but it couldn’t.  Sir Stephen managed to grab it, then cursed as it scratched at his face.  Nat rearranged her hold on the books so that she wouldn’t drop them, and with all three wedged under her left arm she started climbing the fence with her right.</p>
<p>The thief caught up and grabbed her by the ankle.</p>
<p>Nat kicked to make him let go, and caught her ankle on the crowbar.  This did not cause a serious injury, but she did knock the protruding bone on the inner side, which was blindingly painful.  She gritted her teeth and kicked again.</p>
<p>“Jim!  The books!”  She had to hold on to the fence with her left hand, the books still under it, and pull them out and throw them over one at a time.</p>
<p>She’d only done one when the thief grabbed her again, this time by both legs.  He yanked her down to throw her face first into an agave plant.</p>
<p>Spitting out sticky juices, Nat rolled over, a split second ahead of the crowbar coming down.  With one hand gripping the chain link she yanked herself back upright, then used the fence as an anchor point to kick the thief in the chest with both feet.  Where had the books fallen.</p>
<p>“Take the bird!” she heard Sir Stephen order.          </p>
<p>“The bird?” asked Sam’s voice.  “Oh, no!”</p>
<p>Sir Stephen grabbed the top of the fence and vaulted over it in a single graceful motion, to land like a cat on the other side.  The thief paused to size up this new opponent, which gave Nat a moment to spot where the other two notebooks had fallen.  They were lying in and partly under the crushed agave, covered in sap.  She scooped them up.</p>
<p>“Natalie!” said Sir Stephen.  He dropped to one knee and held out his magical shield.</p>
<p>Nat understood at once and ran to hop up on top of it.  Sir Stephen straightened up          , adding his momentum to hers, and tossed her over the fence.  She landed in the dry grass on the other side, rather less gracefully than he had, but in one piece and with the notebooks in her arms.  Sam had returned to the others with the injured falcon, but Jim was there to help her up.</p>
<p>“Have you got the third one?” she asked.</p>
<p>“Right here!” he showed it to her.</p>
<p>The thief attacked Sir Stephen with the crowbar.  Sir Stephen deflected the blow with his shield, then grabbed the weapon and twisted it out of the thief’s hands.</p>
<p>Nat didn’t want to just leave him.  Sir Stephen was fine for now but in a minute he was going to realize that this man, too, had his old friend’s face.  Sir Stephen of Rogsey probably had more resolve than anyone else Natasha had ever met, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t subject to normal emotions, and the fact that the homunculi looked like Buckeye clearly bothered him.  What if he couldn’t bring himself to hurt the thief?  She couldn’t stay, though.  They had to get away with the notebooks, and Jim was already trying to pull her back down the hill behind him.  Reluctantly, she followed.  Halfway down they met Clint coming up, his bow in one hand and an arrow in the other.  It was too dark for him to see what he was aiming at, so he hadn’t yet nocked the dart.  Nat grabbed the arrow from him and pushed the books into his hands.</p>
<p>“Here,” she said.  “Go back to the airport and get these out of Greece!  Where are Allen and Sharon?”</p>
<p>“They should be driving up to meet us,” said Clint.  “They’ll be here any moment.”</p>
<p>Nat heard a metallic sound and looked over her shoulder.  Sir Stephen had tried to use the edge of his shield as a weapon, but the thief had ducked and the shield had hit one of the fenceposts instead, with such force that it had come loose from the soil.  The fence was now sagging as the thief climbed over it, his jacket catching on the edges of the chain link.  He rolled down the hill a few metres before getting up.</p>
<p>At the bottom of the hillside Natasha, Jim, and Clint were standing on was a road, perhaps a hundred metres away.  Nat saw headlights appear on it, and heard the sound of a vehicle engine.</p>
<p>“Go!”  Nat shoved Clint towards the approaching van.  “We’ll meet you at the airport, okay?  Jim, go with him!”</p>
<p>Clint and Jim ran, and Natasha turned around to face the thief.</p>
<p>She didn’t know if he’d seen her give the books to Clint, but apparently he had.  When Nat stepped in his way, the thief moved to push her out of the way.  Like Barnes on the train, he didn’t care who his opponent was, he just wanted his target.  She dodged, grabbed his arm, and swung him around into Sir Stephen, who was running to meet them.  Sir Stephen put an arm around the thief’s head and neck, but then the man bit him, which made Sir Stephen let go.</p>
<p>Although she’d told him to go to the van with Clint, Jim had changed his mind and was now on his way back.  The thief rolled past Nat and got up to keep going down, and the two nearly ran into each other.  Jim grabbed the man’s collar and prepared to punch him, then stopped dead as he realized they both had the same face.</p>
<p>The thief seemed as shocked by this as Jim was.  The two stared at each other for a moment, and then thief raised a finger to point at Jim.</p>
<p>“Who are you?” he asked.</p>
<p>Jim clearly didn’t know how to answer that.  He just repeated the question back.  “Who are <em>you</em>?”</p>
<p>“He is another homunculus,” said Sir Stephen.</p>
<p>That was when the situation changed, Nat realized.  Until that moment, Nat and Sir Stephen had been fighting for their lives and to keep the Newton notebooks.  If their opponent got hurt or killed, then that was unfortunate but necessary.  Now, however, they’d identified the thief as being <em>like Jim</em>, and Jim was, albeit unofficially, a member of their group.  It would be much harder to hurt this man now.</p>
<p>“We can explain,” said Nat.  She went and gently separated Jim and the thief, who’d still been standing there as if frozen in the middle of a fistfight.  Perhaps they could get another unlikely ally out of this, she thought, although what they would do with a <em>second</em> homunculus she had no idea.  What would they <em>call</em> him?  “A homunculus is sort of an artificial person, made by an alchemist,” she told the thief.  “The German you mentioned, he has a DNA sample from a man who died a long time ago…”</p>
<p>But the thief – maybe because he didn’t want to hear it, maybe because he was afraid they would turn him over to the police, or maybe even he didn’t know the reason – just pushed past everybody and ran.</p>
<p>“Wait!” Nat shouted.</p>
<p>“Wait!” Jim agreed, as the man headed for a short cliff above a curve in the road.</p>
<p>The thief did not stop.  He made the perhaps four-metre jump and landed on the pavement, then kept running.  The ground below the road, however, was very steep, almost another cliff itself.  Natasha and the others had been forced to grab the scrubby vegetation in order to climb it on their way up.  The thief lost his footing, fell, slid, rolled right past Clint who was trying to get <em>down</em>, and came to a stop some twenty metres further down the slope, where there was another hairpin turn in the road.  That put him right in the path of the van, which was still on its way to meet them.  Even from this far away, Nat could see the red brake lights come on.</p>
<p>“Watch out!” Jim exclaimed.</p>
<p>It was too late.  The headlights went up, then down, and then stopped.</p>
<p>“Oh, <em>shit</em>!” Jim burst out.  He would have run after, but Nat grabbed his arm.</p>
<p>“No!  You don’t want to end up the same!” she said.  “We’ll <em>walk</em> down and meet them!”</p>
<p>So that was what they did.  Jim was shaking badly, and when he tried to take a step he nearly fell over.  Natasha therefore decided that they would follow the road, even if that did make the walk three times as long.  On the way, Nat observed that if <em>she’d</em> been in the van, she would have left the thief lying there, grabbed Clint, and gone back to the airport to get the notebooks out of the country before the theft was discovered.</p>
<p>But Sharon, Allen, and Sam didn’t think that way.  Instead, they waited while first Clint and then Nat, Jim, and Sir Stephen caught up.  When they arrived, they found Sam sitting in the van with the falcon now silent in his lap.  Allen was outside the van, leaning on the bonnet, staring at the horizon.  Sharon was trying to explain what had happened to Clint.</p>
<p>“He came out of nowhere!” she said.  “Like he dropped out of the sky into the middle of the road, and I tried to stop…”</p>
<p>“It’s okay!” Clint told her.  He was still holding the Newton notebooks.  “It wasn’t your fault.”</p>
<p>At the back of the van was the thief’s clothing, still partially caught under one wheel.  It was smeared with gray ash, which was slowly being carried away by the hot night wind.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Newton's Notebooks</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Natasha, Jim, and Sir Stephen stepped into the glow of the headlights, the others were momentarily surprised and then audibly relieved.  Nat could hear their collective sigh.</p>
<p>“Oh, thank goodness!” Sharon burst out.  “When we realized he’d gone poof I was afraid it was you!”</p>
<p>Jim had stopped to stare at the pile of clothing and ashes, as if trying to figure out what it was… and Nat realized, <em>he didn’t know</em>.  He’d heard them <em>talk</em> about the homunculi haven’t short life spans, but he’d never seen one die, and nobody had explained it to him.  He slowly turned his head to look at Sharon, his expression confused.</p>
<p>“Gone… poof?” he asked.</p>
<p>Was there any way to say it tactfully?  Nat decided not to bother.  “When a homunculus dies,” she said, “when something hurts them badly enough, or when they get pressure on the neck like Neustadt described, they sort of crumble.”  She held out her hands as if cupping water, and then separated them, to suggest a substance slipping through her fingers.  “They just turn to dust.”</p>
<p>Jim reached down to pick up the thief’s shirt.  This disturbed the residue, and some of it flew up into his face.  He coughed a couple of times, then abruptly dropped the clothing, staggered to the edge of the road, and retched.  Nat was afraid he’d lose his balance and tumble down the hillside, himself, and she ran up to pull him back.</p>
<p>“Don’t fall!” she said.</p>
<p>He stumbled backwards a couple of steps, wiping his mouth, and sat down right in the middle of the pavement.  Allen came up with a bottle of water, which Nat took from him and passed on to Jim so he could rinse his mouth out.</p>
<p>“Is that what’s gonna happen to me?  When my… when my time’s up?” Jim asked.</p>
<p>They could have lied to him.  It would probably have been kinder, but he would have known it was a lie, and Nat figured if there were one thing she should have learned from that whole mess with the Holy Grail, it was that the truth was always best even when it hurt.  At least this time, they could be fairly sure that truth <em>existed</em>, even if they weren’t sure what it was yet.</p>
<p>“Probably,” she said.  “They don’t leave a body like regular people do.  They just fall apart.”</p>
<p>Jim swished some water around in his mouth and spat it out, then sat still, staring blankly across the Thira caldera.  The ocean glittered in the moonlight, reflecting the lights of the towns on the shore and the boats sitting at anchor.</p>
<p>“We should go,” said Sharon.</p>
<p>“If I get up, I’m going to be sick.”  Jim’s voice was distant.</p>
<p>Nat put a hand on the back of his neck.  “Head between your knees,” she said, gently pushing down.  “It’ll force blood to the brain.”  Or at least, it would force cells imitating red blood cells to deliver oxygen to the ones imitating neurons.  Either way, it ought to help.  Jim obeyed, and Nat patted his back gently, the way Allen had once done for her when she was upset.  Whether she was doing it because she honestly felt sorry for him, or merely because she didn’t want Allen to father somebody else while she wasn’t letting him father <em>her</em>, she honestly didn’t know anymore.</p>
<p>“Any better?” she asked.</p>
<p>“Maybe,” Jim mumbled.</p>
<p>They ended up sitting there for the better part of half an hour, while Jim trembled softly and took deep breaths, trying not to have a total breakdown.  Finally, he grabbed the van’s fender and dragged himself to his feet, as if it were the most difficult thing in the world.</p>
<p>“Better?” Nat asked again.</p>
<p>“Yeah.”  He swallowed hard.  “Maybe.  I don’t know.  Let’s get out of here.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>They needed to leave the island before the theft was discovered.  No matter how careless Maslanka’s night watchmen were, they would doubtless have heard <em>something</em> during the fight between Nat and the thief, and when they found the Newton notebooks missing, they would make the obvious connection.  When they arrived at the airport, however, they found that there were no flights outgoing.  Mount Aetna in Sicily was smoking and flights had been grounded for the next twenty-four hours as a precaution.  They would have to find another solution, and before they could do that, they needed to get some sleep.</p>
<p>Since there were no hotels available, that meant improvising.  They parked near the airport and found, on the edge of a nearby property, an unfinished building.  The structure had support pillars in place at the corners of the rooms, and it already bore one of Santorini’s trademark barrel roofs, but no walls as yet.  Nat thought it resembled something a child might build out of popsicle sticks and toilet paper rolls.</p>
<p>Sharon pulled up the van next to the construction site, in a place where a piece of stone wall and a scraggly olive tree would hide them from view of people on the road.  Then Sam, who was sitting in the passenger side seat next to her, turned to talk to the others in the back.</p>
<p>“Jim,” he said.</p>
<p>“Yeah?” Jim asked.  His voice was still trembling.</p>
<p>“Those three flasks Madame Desrosiers left for you,” Sam said.  “I need one of them.”</p>
<p>The flasks were in Jim’s backpack, in the boot – but he crossed his arms over his chest as if to clutch them against himself.  “What for?” he asked.</p>
<p>He wasn’t angry, Nat observed, he was <em>scared</em>.  Taking one of those flasks away would get him that much closer to disintegrating.</p>
<p>“For the falcon,” Sam said.  “Her left humerus is shattered and the only other way to fix it is immediate surgery.  That would kill her even if I had any anesthetic, which I don’t.  Birds don’t do well with blood loss.”</p>
<p>“What about <em>me</em>?” Jim asked plaintively.</p>
<p>“I only need a little bit,” said Sam.  “She’s a small bird.”</p>
<p>Eyes wide and mouth slightly open, Jim looked around at the others.  Was he looking for somebody to argue with Sam for him?  If so, he was disappointed – nobody said a word.  Nat supposed she could have objected that the bird was only an animal… but then, it could be argued in turn that Jim was only a construct whose lifetime was going to be short anyway.  Somebody could point out that, as Sam had already said, the injured wing would only need a drop… but they didn’t know how this stuff worked.  A drop might make all the difference.</p>
<p>“Please?” said Sam.  “I sent her in there.  I gotta help her.  <em>Now</em>.  And this is the only way I can do it.  I’ll make it up to you somehow.”</p>
<p>Jim lowered his head.  “All right.  Take some,” he said.  “Just a little.”</p>
<p>“Thanks.”  Sam reached back to grab Jim’s shoulder.  “Thanks, man.”</p>
<p>Jim shook his head.  “Just get on with it, before I change my mind,” he said miserably.</p>
<p>While the others stood around and watched, Sam spread out a shirt on the ground and laid the injured falcon on top of it, as gently as if a touch in the wrong place might make it vanish like one of the homunculi.  He arranged the wing as best he could, and by the beam of a flashlight Nat could see blood in the feathers and splintered bone poking through the skin.  The bird made a soft croaking noise, but was too weak to actually cry out in pain.  Natasha had always found sympathy for animals easier than for people, and her heart did go out to it.</p>
<p>Jim unscrewed the top of one of Desrosiers’ flasks and gave it to Sam, who very carefully poured out a drop of the thick liquid within.  The stark shadows cast by the flashlight made it hard to see what was happening, but Nat could have <em>sworn</em> she saw the colourless elixir turning to bone, to skin, and to feathers in front of her eyes.  It took a couple of minutes, too slow to really <em>watch</em> but obvious as soon as she looked away and then back again.  The bird twitched and hissed, then lay still for a moment… and just as Nat was starting to wonder if it were dead, it raised its head and got unsteadily to its feet.  It stretched its wings and flapped them a couple of times, as if testing, but folded them again without taking off.</p>
<p>With another sigh of relief, Sam reached out to scratch the top of its head.  “You hang out,” he told the falcon fondly.  “We’ll look after you until we know for sure you’re okay.”</p>
<p>Clint was shaking his head.  “Wow,” he said.  “No wonder I was confused.”</p>
<p>With that done, they all settled down on the warm concrete of the building’s foundation with whatever blankets and sleeping bags they’d managed to find.  The little falcon curled up by Sam’s head, like a dog or cat.  Everybody was exhausted and most of them nodded off quickly – but after an hour or so Nat woke up suddenly, and when she opened her eyes, she found that Jim’s sleeping bag was empty.  He was sitting on the edge of the foundation a couple of metres away, staring up at the stars as if contemplating his place in this big, cold universe.  She wondered if she should get up and talk to him again, but decided against it.  There was, after all, very little she could say.</p>
<hr/>
<p>The edge of the sun appeared on the ocean to the east at around six thirty in the morning, which meant nobody was able to sleep much past then.  They all woke stiff from the concrete, still tired, and already complaining.</p>
<p>“What’s for breakfast?” Clint said through a yawn.</p>
<p>“Breakfast?  What’s <em>breakfast</em>?” Sharon asked.  She stretched and tilted her head back and forth to get a kink out of her neck, then turned to give Sir Stephen a gentle shake.  “Come on, Steve.  We’ve got to figure out what we’re doing next.”</p>
<p>Sam was already awake and seemed to have been so for some time.  He’d wrapped extra cloth around his arm so that the little falcon could perch there without its talons piercing his skin, and he was now stroking its head and neck, and talking to it.</p>
<p>“You did a really good job,” he whispered.  “You were very brave.”</p>
<p>Once the group had collected themselves, they decided to avoid Emporio for now and instead headed for the island’s largest town, Fira.  At any time of year, Fira was host to several times as many tourists as actual inhabitants, which made for plenty of crowds they could vanish into if they spotted anyone they didn’t want to meet.  Although it was only eight when they arrived, as in Athens the holiday-makers were already out in droves, trying to take in the island’s attractions before the day got too hot.</p>
<p>“Why does everybody want to come here?” Clint wondered aloud as they made their way through narrow, meandering cobbled streets, between rows of shops and restaurants.  “All the travel brochures make Santorini sound like the greatest place on earth but it’s a <em>rock</em>.  There’s nothing here!”</p>
<p>“I think that might be the appeal,” said Nat.  “It’s isolated, it never rains, and the whole place is built around the tourist industry.  It’s like a cruise ship that never goes anywhere.”</p>
<p>“And has no air conditioning,” Clint groused, fanning himself.</p>
<p>The group walked into an outdoor café for breakfast with the falcon perched on Sam’s shoulder.  This seemed to startle the employees, but nobody commented as they were guided to a table.  A minute or so later a waitress brought them their menus.  She smiled shyly at Sam.</p>
<p>“Your bird is very beautiful,” she said.</p>
<p>“Thanks,” Sam nodded.</p>
<p>“What’s his name?” the waitress asked.</p>
<p>“It’s a she,” Sam corrected.  “<em>Her</em> name is…” he glanced at the café sign, which had a blue octopus on it.  “Redwing.  Like the hockey team.”</p>
<p>“I can see she loves you very much,” said the waitress.</p>
<p>Once she left them to look through their menus, Jim looked over his shoulder at the sign, then at Sam, then at the sign again.  If he had any questions, however, he seemed to decide not to bother.</p>
<p>They ordered their breakfast, and then Allen took out the Newton journals, which he’d had in his backpack.  He handed one to Sir Stephen, one to Natasha, and one to Sharon, each of whom opened the book and looked inside.  There was Newton’s signature on the inner front leaf.  The pages were un-ruled paper, the text a looping 17<sup>th</sup> century script that was almost impenetrable to people who’d grown up with modern standardized lettering.  Even Nat, who regularly spent time wading through medieval manuscripts, had some trouble with it.</p>
<p>Even worse, when she did start to get a feel for the shapes of the letters, she quickly realized that the text was neither English nor Latin.  Instead it was utter nonsense, and apparently random sequence of symbols with no punctuation and only occasional spaces.  Some of the ‘words’ looked as though they could be sounded out, but they certainly weren’t in any language Nat knew.</p>
<p>“Because of course Newton wrote in code,” she said out loud.  She didn’t know why she was even surprised.  “Here, let me see yours.”  She gave her book to Sir Stephen and took his in exchange.</p>
<p>His book was both different and similar.  It seemed to contain what might have been mathematical equations or chemical formulae set aside on their own lines between blocks of text, but even those were written in a combination of letters, numbers, and zodiacal symbols that meant very little. </p>
<p>“Mine’s the same, I think.”  Sharon turned her book to show what was written.  There was some kind of circular diagram with labels, but again, they were unreadable.</p>
<p>“Okay,” said Nat.  “The good news is, it’s not the Voynich manuscript.”  Newton’s notes were at least in the Roman alphabet, and they could probably assume there was only <em>one</em> code, rather than the mess of several he’d described.</p>
<p>“That’s… <em>something</em>, I guess,” said Sam, not sounding particularly impressed.  “<em>Why</em> does everything have to be in code?”</p>
<p>“Because alchemists were witches and heretics and he didn’t want to be burned at the stake,” said Nat.  She’d cracked codes before.  She could do this… she hoped.  “He wouldn’t want it to be so complicated even <em>he</em> couldn’t read it, so the most likely solution is that it’s a simple letter substitution.  In English the easiest way to crack one of those is to assume that the most frequent letter is <em>E</em>, and then work from there.  Most such codes just move the whole alphabet by some number of letters, so we’ll start by…”</p>
<p>“It’s not English,” said Jim, looking over Sir Stephen’s shoulder.  “It’s Greek.”</p>
<p>Nat looked up sharply and found Jim blinking, apparently as surprised by this pronouncement as she was.  “How do you know?” she asked.</p>
<p>“I… just know,” he said.</p>
<p>The waitress returned then with their food, and the notebooks had to be set aside for the moment while everyone dug in.  Nat found herself watching Jim eat, and wondered if the food did him any good.  If his cells could use food to replenish themselves, why didn’t they do so instead of quickly dying off?  Or if they couldn’t, then why did he feel hungry at all?</p>
<p>While they ate, Nat glanced at the book out of the corner of her eye again.  The most commonly-used letter in Greek, she recalled reading somewhere, was <em>a</em>.  She kept eating her toast with one hand, and counted vowels on the page… there <em>were</em> a lot of <em>a</em>’s, but there were even more<em> e</em>’s, so that wasn’t very helpful.  The letter combination <em>us</em> also seemed to occur quite a bit… that was more typical of Latin than of Greek, as was the use of the letter <em>c</em> but never <em>k</em>.  Was it Greek disguised as Latin?</p>
<p>She pushed her plate aside and picked the book back up.  “What else can you tell me about it?” she asked Jim.</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” he repeated, still evidently quite uncomfortable with what had just happened.  “Like I said, I don’t even know where the Greek came from.”</p>
<p>Nat tapped a pencil against her lower lip.  “Anybody got a notepad?”</p>
<p>Allen offered her one, and she copied out a line of letters: <em>gerus gecedhus</em>.  Then below it, she wrote the same line as if it were Greek: <em>geros gekedhos</em>.  “If you swap <em>u</em> and <em>o</em>…” she murmured.  “And maybe <em>a</em> with <em>e</em>, because <em>e</em> is more common in Latin…”  That gave her <em>garos gakadhos</em>, which still meant nothing.  Something would have to be done with the consonants, too… she played with them in her head while she ate.  There would be <em>rules</em> here.  Sir Isaac Newton was the first man to impose rules on gravity.  He’d gone to some trouble to make what he was writing look like nonsense Latin.  He would not have exchanged letters at random.</p>
<p>Halfway through a mouthful of yoghurt, she had a revelation – it <em>was</em> a letter substitution code, but it was based on <em>phonology</em>.  She tried to swallow and ask for her notebook back, but in true Greek fashion the yoghurt was so thick it was almost cheese, and it took her a moment to get it down.</p>
<p>“Let me see that,” she said, scooping up the book.</p>
<p>“You figured it out?  Already?” asked Sharon, startled.</p>
<p>“You exchange stops,” said Nat.  “Voiced with unvoiced… here it’s velar with velar but I assume it’ll be the same for the dentals and the plosives… <em>r</em> is a liquid consonant so we’ll exchange that with <em>l</em>, and <em>gerus gecedhus</em> becomes <em>kalos k’agathos</em>, <em>beautiful and good</em>!”  That was a fairly common phrase in classical Greek, which had often equated beauty with goodness… as, for that matter, had alchemy.</p>
<p>The others stared at her, taking in the fact that she’d cracked a secret code over breakfast.  “Have <em>you</em> ever had a crack at the Voynich Manuscript?” asked Sam.</p>
<p>“Not unless you count staring at it the other day,” Nat said.  “Don’t be so impressed – if Jim hadn’t told me it was Greek this could have taken days.  I would definitely have tried at least Latin first, and probably English too.”  She smiled at Jim.  “How did you know?”  she repeated.</p>
<p>He looked very uncomfortable now, as if he hadn’t wanted to be right.  “I don’t <em>know</em>.  It’s like when I knew where he’d been living, or knew about <em>Star Trek</em>.  It’s just kind of there, in the background of my brain.”</p>
<p>It seemed that Neustadt had definitely imparted more knowledge to his creations than he thought – and it was apparently almost unconscious knowledge, imparted unconsciously.  Interesting, and hopefully useful.</p>
<p>“All right,” said Nat.  “I’ll write out the cipher, and then once we get it back into Greek we’ll just have to translate it.  If somebody else wants to work out the letters, I can read the Greek.”  It wouldn’t tell them what was going on in the diagrams or equations, but it was definitely a start.</p>
<p>The notebooks were slim, but all the work of deciphering the looping script, matching each of the letters with its phonological partner, and then translating the Greek into English, had to be done by hand with pencils and paper.  That made it a very slow process.  The group finished their breakfast and paid for it, then moved on from café to café, ordering water and weak wines, or stopping in souvenir shops for notebooks and pens to use.  Line by line, and page by page, Newton’s writings began to take shape.</p>
<p>The book Allen had initially handed to Sir Stephen remained indecipherable.  As Nat had expected, there was no key to the symbols used in the equations.  The book Nat had started with turned out to be full of cryptic statements, not unlike the one from the published writings about the balance of Libra and the venom of Scorpio.  <em>The smoke of the burning Tower blots out the Sun, hiding it from the Fool’s sight</em>, said one page.  Another read <em>only by gold can gold be made, but purity is essential</em>, said another – compared to the rest, that line was downright lucid.  Nat assumed it meant that the reactor needed a sample of gold to start with, like the elixir needed a sample of DNA.  Any contamination would affect the final result.</p>
<p>Yet a third noted that <em>the principle of the Holy Dove is in Brother Aleksio’s keeping</em>.  Nat frowned, tapping her pen on top of her notebook.</p>
<p>“The Holy Dove,” she said.  “That’s the monastery in Montenegro that he mentioned to us.  If the rest of this means anything, I’m guessing that the ‘principle’ Brother Aleksio was holding onto for him was probably the purest gold Newton knew about.  It would be a template for the Philosopher’s Stone to make more.”  She looked over at Sharon.  “Did Fury get back to you about that address in Australia?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” said Sharon.  “It’s a sheep ranch the size of Cornwall, and one of the most sparsely-populated places on Earth outside of Antarctica.”</p>
<p>“That would be a perfect place to make the Philosopher’s Stone,” Nat observed.  “Like Rasputin working in Siberia… someplace where if it goes boom, there’s not a lot of people around to get hurt.”  Certainly much better than Daedalus starting the thing up in the middle of Akrotiri.  “Where’s that card he gave us?  We were supposed to ask for Brother Luka?”</p>
<p>Sharon pulled it out of her purse for a look.  “Yeah.  Brother Luka.”</p>
<p>Nat tilted her head back and spent a moment staring at the bottomless Adriatic sky, considering their options.</p>
<p>“What are you thinking?” asked Allen.</p>
<p>“I’m thinking…” she frowned.  “We should definitely go to Kotor.  At the very least, we can poke the bear trap and see if it closes.  If we scare Brother Luka a little, maybe he’ll tell us what Newton wants with the philosopher’s stone.”</p>
<p>“What <em>would</em> he want with it, if not to make gold?” asked Sir Stephen.</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” said Nat.  “That’s what worries me.”  If you didn’t know what something was, it could be <em>anything</em>.  “It would be good to know that all he wants is gold, because that means it isn’t something worse.”</p>
<p>“What sort of worse thing?” asked Sharon.</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” Nat repeated.  “That’s why it’s worse.”  She looked at Jim.</p>
<p>He shrugged.  “I can’t tell you that.  Maybe I’m just thinking about it too hard and it’ll come to me if I stop.”</p>
<p>“Don’t worry about it,” Allen assured him, with a pat on the shoulder that made something in Nat bristle all over again.  “You don’t have to <em>earn</em> staying with us.”</p>
<p>“Then why do I?” asked Jim distantly.</p>
<p>“Because you need help,” said Allen, “and we try to help people if we can.”</p>
<p>But Jim was shaking his head.  “I was asking myself,” he said.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Since there was no flight they could take, the CAAP next tried to get a ferry back to the mainland.  This was not an idea solution – the ships went to Athens or Crete, and from there it would be a roundabout route to Montenegro.  After a couple of hours of research, Sharon found something better.  A cargo boat was willing to let them ride along to Budva, a long as they stayed out of the way of the crew and didn’t complain too much.  To get from the clifftops down to Fira’s harbour, they took a rather hair-raising ride down the incredibly steep Santorini cable cars.</p>
<p>“Look, they’ve got donkeys,” said Clint, pointing to a winding path below them.  The cars were all but scraping the rocks as they descended, and they had a very good view of the back-and-forth trail where the train of animals were on their way down to the docks.</p>
<p>“That must be how they got stuff up and down before the cable cars,” Sharon observed.</p>
<p>“So why are we risking our necks on this thing when we could be riding donkeys?” asked Clint.  The car bumped over one of the cable towers.</p>
<p>“I thought you said horses were bastards,” Sam said.</p>
<p>“I didn’t say that, Robin Hood said that,” Clint told him.  “And horses <em>are</em> bastards, but donkeys are sweet.  We’ve got one on the farm.  He’s a pet.  His name is Barney, after my brother.”</p>
<p>“I bet your brother was flattered,” Sharon said with a smile.</p>
<p>“I told him it was the kids’ idea,” said Clint.</p>
<p>Jim was leaning on the window, staring down at the scrubby cliffs.  Nat had deliberately sat between him and Allen, so now it was up to her to touch his shoulder and ask if he were okay.  He’d been very quiet since breakfast, wile the rest of them worked out Newton’s cipher.</p>
<p>“How do you feel?” she inquired.</p>
<p>He turned to look at her.  “Who’s the guy who had the sword hanging over his head?”</p>
<p>“Damocles,” Nat replied.  She remembered it less from the myth and more from the <em>Rocky Horror Picture Show</em>.</p>
<p>“Like that,” said Jim.</p>
<hr/>
<p>The next morning they ate a much simpler breakfast of hot cereal and coffee in the ship’s little mess hall.  Jim had brought his three flasks with him, and when he was done eating, he stood them up in a line behind his bowl and sat contemplating them for a moment.  They’d marked the opened one with an elastic band.  The other two still had full doses in them.</p>
<p>“It’s been five days,” he said.  “That means I should drink the first one, right?”</p>
<p>“That’s what she said,” Allen agreed.</p>
<p>“I wonder what would happen if I waited a day,” Jim said.  “Would that help me longer, or would I just start falling apart too fast for it to help me?  And what happens with the one we used some of on Dr. Wilson’s bird?  Should I use that one first or save it for last?”  He didn’t sound like he begrudged this anymore… he was just idly curious, as if he’d resigned himself to his fate and the questions were all academic at this point.</p>
<p>If they ever saw Desrosiers again, Nat thought, she would have an even harder time getting away.</p>
<p>Jim chose one of the two full flasks, then unscrewed the lid and sniffed the contents as he might a bottle of brandy.  He made a face, then took a swig – and promptly gagged.</p>
<p>“Oh, <em>god</em>, that’s <em>foul</em>!” he wheezed, as Allen whacked him on the back.  “It’s like having a warm slug crawling down my throat!”</p>
<p>The unasked question hung in the air.  Jim thought about it for a few moments, then took a deep breath and downed the rest of the flask’s contents, as fast as he could, without stopping to breathe.  There were tears in his eyes by the time he was done, more from effort than from emotion.</p>
<p>“What’s it taste like?” asked Sam, curious.</p>
<p>“Like mud mixed with tobacco juice.”  Jim wiped at his eyes, then grabbed the nearest cup of liquid – it happened to be Allen’s black coffee – and downed that, too, followed by a bottle of sparkling water Nat handed to him.  “I can still taste it,” he whimpered.</p>
<p>“Do you feel any different?” asked Nat.</p>
<p>“I can’t tell yet,” he said.</p>
<p>She didn’t ask him if it were worth it.  People went through much worse things in the name of staying alive: dialysis and surgery, amputations and chemotherapy.  Compared to such medical torture, swallowing slimy stuff that tasted bad wasn’t even an inconvenience.</p>
<p>“If it is any comfort,” said Sir Stephen, “Buckeye and myself dared each other to eat worse things than slugs.”</p>
<p>Jim eyed him with distaste.  “Like what?” he asked, then held up a  hand.  “No, I take it back.  Don’t tell me.  The middle ages were disgusting and I don’t want hear about it.”</p>
<p>“It was not so very bad,” Sir Stephen protested.</p>
<p>“Yes, it was,” said Nat.  “People kept pigs in their living rooms and threw the contents of their chamber pots into the street.  Then there’s black death, smallpox, tuberculosis…”</p>
<p>“If Newton has made many of you,” Sir Stephen mused, “then versions of yourself will have seen all these things change over the past several centuries.  I envy you that.”  Sir Stephen himself had been thrown into the modern world with no preparation whatsoever.</p>
<p>“Yeah, I’m fine with not having seen it,” said Jim with distaste.</p>
<p>“Buckeye’s father always said that what did not kill a man made him stronger,” Sir Stephen told him.</p>
<p>“I don’t have a father,” Jim snarled, and Sir Stephen finally seemed to take the hint that he wanted to end this conversation.  However interested he might have been in the man earlier, Jim had clearly decided that he was <em>not</em> Sir James Buckeye, and didn’t want to try to be.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. The Lost Relic</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The city of Kotor in Montenegro didn’t have many claims to fame.  It had been a reasonably important trading centre under the Venetian empire, but those days were long gone, and it was only just starting to find new life as a tourist attraction.  Visually, it was the exact opposite of Santorini.  That island had been whitewashed villages balanced precariously on top of the cliffs, with no trees.  Kotor was dark stone and brick, clustered at the bottom of a deep, fjord-like valley full of foliage.  It was much more sheltered and cooler than Santorini, and Natasha would rather have spent a week in Kotor than another day on among the barren volcanic crags.</p>
<p>When they arrived, there was a cruise ship anchored in the bay.</p>
<p>“Wouldn’t it be funny if that were the same boat we saw at Santorini?” asked Clint.</p>
<p>Nat shielded her eyes from the low morning sun and squinted to see the logo on the ship’s superstructure.  “I think it <em>is</em>,” she said.</p>
<p>“Really?”</p>
<p>“Yeah.”  As the sun went behind a cloud for a moment, the light changed, and Nat was able to make out the image.  “There it is: Zodiac Cruise Lines, the <em>Scorpio II</em>.  Same as in Santorini.”</p>
<p>“That’s… actually not funny at all,” Clint decided.  “Think how much more fun we’d be having on our little tour of the Balkans if we were on a cruise ship.”</p>
<p>“You’d have a way better selection of wines,” Nat said.</p>
<p>“Air conditioning,” Sam agreed.</p>
<p>“Lobsters to race,” said Jim.</p>
<p>“We’d have a way more <em>expensive</em> selection of wines,” Clint corrected.  “Santorini was expensive enough.  Speaking of which…” he checked his phone.  “Laura says if I’m in Kotor, I need to find her some smoked ham.  Apparently that’s a thing.”</p>
<p>“All right.”  Nat nodded.  “We’ll save the world.  You can shop for souvenirs.”</p>
<p>“I’m glad you guys trust me with the important stuff,” said Clint.</p>
<p>Before they did anything else, they found a room at the Hotel Vadar, just a moment’s walk from the gate in the old Venetian city walls.  Only one was available, and that only due to a last-minute cancellation, but it had two beds, and they would make do.  It would definitely be better than camping out in a construction site on Santorini, or rock-hard mattresses on the creaking cargo boat.</p>
<p>If Neustadt wanted them in Kotor in order to trap them, then it probably wouldn’t matter if they stopped to take a hap first.  A mousetrap, after all, wouldn’t spring until something touched the cheese.  But after their encounter with the thief on Santorini, they worried the alchemists might have decided to take matters into their own hands.  Although everybody was tired, they had a quick lunch, and then set out for the monastery at once.</p>
<p>The Church and Monastery of the Holy Dove were outside the northwest corner of the town, a short but arduous hike on a very steep path that wound back and forth up the mountainside.  There were Catholic churches in Montenegro, but this one was Eastern Orthodox, identified by its domed roof and a steeple with three bells, one each for Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The Square of the Holy Dove outside was thronged with tourists and with vendors selling trinkets to them.  On the left side of the church steps was a man selling pamphlets about local history in several languages, and on the right were a pair of sisters buskin, one with a guitar and the other singing English pop songs.  Stray cats and dark-coloured pigeons ran around underfoot.</p>
<p>Trailing behind a tour group from the cruise ship, they climbed the steps and entered the church.  The interior had once been decorated in the Byzantine style, with colourful murals and lots of gold embellishment, but much of the plaster had fallen off the walls during an earthquake in the 1960s.  There was little hope of recreating the paintings in their former splendor, so the walls had been left as bare red limestone.  Only a few fragments of the original décor remained, and a corkboard displaying carefully colourized old photographs to suggest what it had once looked like.</p>
<p>The austerity had the effect of making the wall of icons behind the altar stand out all the more, their gilded surfaces glittering in the shafts of light from the high windows.  A monk was busy re-lighting candles in front of these holy pictures, murmuring a prayer as he did each one.  The group waited respectfully until he finished, while Natasha wondered if she could get away with beating up the tourists who were taking flash pictures in spite of the signs asking them not to.</p>
<p>The young monk lit the last candle, and Natasha approached him.  “Excuse me,” she said.  “Do you speak English?”</p>
<p>“Some,” he replied.  He was in his late teens or early twenties, with a bit of acne on his forehead and a patchy attempt at a beard.  “Do you have questions about the church?”</p>
<p>“No,” said Natasha, “we’re here to see Brother Luka.”</p>
<p>The young monk’s eyes widened.  “Why do you want Brother Luka?” he asked.</p>
<p>Nat could already tell this wasn’t going to go well.  “A man named Neustadt asked us to come here,” she said.  “He told us Brother Luka had something he was keeping safe for him.”</p>
<p>The monk looked around as if afraid of being spied on.  “Wait here,” he said.</p>
<p>He vanished through the back door of the church, leaving them to wait and contemplate the crumbling paintings that remained on the insides of some of the supporting arches.  These were mainly the faces of saints, with their names in Greek lettering next to them.  By one was a man on a ladder, using some sort of glue to stabilize a bit that was about to fall apart.</p>
<p>The young monk seemed to be gone an awfully long time, until the various members of the CAAP started to worry he didn’t actually intend to return.  Nat was just starting to think about going to look for him when he finally returned, accompanied by a second man in the same black robe and soft black hat.  Although older than the candle-lighter, this fellow was still younger than Nat would have pictured a monk, which she tended to think of as a bunch of old men clinging to a dying institution.  He was no older than fifty and clean-shaved, with a jowly face and a strong eastern European nose.  His expression was worried.</p>
<p>“Good morning,” he said to them.  “I am Father Slavko of the Brothers of the Holy Dove.”</p>
<p>“Good morning,” Nat replied, and for the sake of looking legitimate, she pulled out her badge.  The others who had one did likewise, while Jim just put his hands in his pockets and looked awkward.  “I’m Dr. Natalie Jones, of the Committee for the Appraisal of Archaeological Peril from the UK.  We were told to come here and see Brother Luka, but the man we spoke to didn’t give us much information.”</p>
<p>That seemed to worry the younger monk even more, but the Abbot just nodded gravely.  “You are the second group of people in as many days who have come for Brother Luka,” he said, and Nat’s heart sank.  Sure enough, his next words confirmed her fears.  “A man in a hat came yesterday morning, and the two argued.  The visitor left angry, and Brother Luka took ill shortly after.  He’s now in the hospital in Meljine.  The doctors said it was a stroke.”</p>
<p>Nat wondered if Neustadt had done something in purpose, or if Brother Luka were just an old man who’d gotten too angry for his own good.  “What did they talk about?” she asked.</p>
<p>“I did not year,” said the Abbot.  “It was not my business.”</p>
<p>“Excuse me,” the younger monk said, “but I did hear.  I did not <em>listen</em>,” he added, when the Abbot frowned at him disapprovingly, “but I heard some.  They spoke about Aleksio the Heretic.”</p>
<p><em>Aleksio</em>.  That was the name from Newton’s notebooks.  The Principle, whatever that was, was in his keeping.  “Who is Aleksio the Heretic?” she asked.</p>
<p>The Abbot looked over his shoulder at the crowded church, just as the younger monk had done a few minutes earlier.  “You are the people we heard so much about on the news?” he asked.  “The ones who fought the sorcerer at the Tower of London?”</p>
<p>“That’s us,” said Sam.</p>
<p>“Sir Stephen here is supposed to be a saint, if that helps,” Nat added.</p>
<p>“Come with me,” the Abbot ordered.</p>
<p>He led them out of the church by the back door.  The front doors had been fairly modern and painted dark teal, probably post-dating the earthquake.  The back was ornately carved wood with big iron strap hinges, and must have been centuries old.  The area where the monks actually lived was not open to the public, and it was sparingly furnished, with whitewashed walls and no electric lights.</p>
<p>The Abbot stopped by a small table and took a flashlight out of a drawer, then produced an immense iron key and unlocked another door.  This one was even older than the back door of the church, and looked like it might lead to a medieval torture chamber.  It was made of planks six inches thick, reinforced with heavy iron bands and nails like railroad spikes.  When the Abbot opened the door, Nat could see that the nails were so long they went all the way through to protrude a few inches from the back, where they’d been hammered sideways to lie flat.  Beyond, a very narrow flight of stone steps spiraled down into darkness.</p>
<p>“Be careful,” the Abbot warned.  “They are often wet.”</p>
<p>Down they went, in single file.  Sir Stephen and Sam, who were both very tall men, had to stoop so as not to hit their heads on the ceiling.  Jim bent at the knees, and Allen hugged his own shoulders, trying to keep them from brushing the walls.  Only Nat, the shortest, was able to stand up straight.  If anyone had wanted to go back up, the people behind him or her would have had to turn back, as well.</p>
<p>At the bottom was an equally narrow corridor, with walls made of damp stone that had once been plastered, but most of that had now flaked away.  It went a short way to another door, which the Abbot opened with a different key.  The rusted hinges squealed as they moved, thunderously loud in the tiny, quiet space.</p>
<p>This door opened onto an underground chamber.  A little bit of light and a slight draft came in, through a set of drains in the floor of the church directly above them.  Shadows passed as the tourists wandered around.  Placed so as to be directly below the altar and icons was a wooden table with two objects on it.  One was a little sandbox in which several candles had been set upright to burn, and the other an ornamental reliquary.  In front of the table another monk was kneeling.  He’d looked up at the sound of the hinges moving, but saw it was only the Abbot, and returned to his silent prayers.</p>
<p>“Have you heard of the Cathars?” asked the Abbot.</p>
<p>“They were a heretical group during the Middle Ages,” Natasha replied at once.  “They believed that God and the devil were equal in power, and the Earth was their battleground.  Was Aleksio the Heretic a Cathar?”</p>
<p>“No,” said the Abbot.  “His was a much more poisonous idea.  He believed that the devil could not be truly evil, because all the evil he does is in the service of God’s plan.  He reasoned that evil could not exist unless God allowed it ,and therefore evil can serve good purposes.  He thought Judas would go to Heaven for making Christ’s sacrifice possible, and the Anti-Christ would be as divine as Christ Himself.”</p>
<p>Nat had been hoping for something a little more alchemical.  As far as she could tell, this was just theological hair-splitting, and seemed irrelevant to whatever Newton wanted… unless it was something to do with what Desrosiers had said about him transmuting himself into a god.  “Neustadt said he had something called the Principle,” she said.</p>
<p>“That is in here,” the Abbot said.  “It is our most holy relic.”</p>
<p>“Why is it hidden away, then?” Sir Stephen asked, “and not in a place where Christian souls may benefit by it?”</p>
<p>“For a long time it was because of the Crusaders,” the Abbot explained.  “It was the sort of treasure they would stop at nothing to possess, so our forebears pretended it was only a myth.  After centuries of that it was almost forgotten.  Then it had to be hidden from the heathen Turks, who would have destroyed it if they’d found it – and then there was Aleksio, who said that the Antichrist would come for it on the day of judgment.”  He glanced up at the ceiling as another shadow passed over the drain grate.  “And don’t think I haven’t wondered if the man in the hat were he.”</p>
<p>“He’s not the Antichrist, he’s an alchemist,” said Natasha, although she supposed it was possible that <em>Aleksio</em> had thought Newton was the Antichrist.  Would that make him the good guy to a mind who believed that even evil served God’s plan?  “Is it gold?”</p>
<p>“No,” said the Abbot.  “It is something infinitely more valuable than that, and yet not worth a cent.”</p>
<p>He touched the praying monk’s shoulder, and the man got up and stood aside.  The Abbot then took a chain from around his own neck and removed a small, tarnished key from it, and unlocked the reliquary on the table.</p>
<p>Inside, on a small velvet cushion, was a golden statue of a bird with red cabochons for eyes.  It glinted warmly in the candlelight, and based on its rich colour Nat suspected it was very pure gold, indeed.  The Abbot picked it up as if it were very heavy, which reinforced that impression.  This would be something outrageously valuable, both for its material and for its status as a piece of outstanding middle Byzantine art.  Only to a real hardcore believer could whatever was inside, most likely a moldy old tooth or mummified finger, be more valuable than its container.</p>
<p>The Abbot opened the golden bird by a seam around its midsection and peeked in, and his mouth dropped open in horror.  He quickly closed it again, said a whispered prayer, and then took a second look.</p>
<p>“It’s empty,” Sam observed, not even surprised.</p>
<p>“No, there is this,” said the Abbot, and delicately removed a piece of black fluff from inside the bird.  For a moment this just looked like lint to Nat, but then she recognized it as a down feather, most likely from one of the dark-coloured pigeons they’d seen in the square.  The interior of the golden bird was hollow and lined with rather tarnished cloth of silver.  There was nothing else inside it.</p>
<p>There were tears in the Abbot’s eyes.  His prominent adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard, trying to fight them back.</p>
<p>“What was it?” asked Sharon.</p>
<p>Rather than reply, the Abbot solemnly dropped the black feather into a candle flame.  For a moment the choking smell of burning keratin filled the room, and then it was gone.  He closed the bird-shaped reliquary and left it on the table, dropping it from an inch up rather than laying it down with care.  This object, probably worth millions, was nothing to him without its contents.</p>
<p>“Come,” he said quietly.  “I need a drink.”</p>
<p>He escorted the CAAP back upstairs to his office, a stucco-walled room with a large wooden desk and chair.  The walls here had some decoration, mostly black and white photographs of the town and the scenery around it, including ships anchored in the bay.  There, he distributed bottles of unlabeled reddish beer from a local brewery, and pulled out a cloth to mop his brow.  His hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t open his own beer bottle.  Sharon had to do it for him.</p>
<p>“<em>Hvala</em>,” he murmured, clutching the bottle in both hands.</p>
<p>“When was the last time you know for sure it was in there?” asked Sharon.  “I mean the last time you, personally, saw it.”</p>
<p>“Two nights previous,” said the Abbot.  “Every week I clean the silver… I remember thinking it will need replacing, because if I take much more tarnish off it will wear through.”</p>
<p>“What time?” Sharon asked.</p>
<p>“Just after Vespers.  But there is always somebody with it,” the Abbot added.  “At any hour there will be a brother in there keeping watch, as there was when I took you in.”</p>
<p>Sharon was treating this as a crime, Nat thought… which was probably reasonable.  After all, something had clearly been stolen, even though they didn’t yet know <em>what</em>.  “What was in it?” Nat asked.  “I mean, what was the relic?”</p>
<p>The Abbot took a very long drink of beer, spilling some down the front of his robe as he continued to shake.  “It was a feather,” he said.  “Much like the one it was replaced with, but white rather than black.  A feather that fell from the holy dove as it attended upon the baptism of Christ.”</p>
<p>Nat may have been an atheist, but even she knew how incredibly important that would be to the monks.  The bird that appeared when Christ was baptized was supposed to have been an incarnation of the Holy Spirit, the third component of the Christian trinity.  A feather from that would be something like a hair from Christ’s beard, an actual piece of God.</p>
<p>She was also absolutely sure it was a fake, because there was no way a feather could last that long.  Nat had seen two-thousand-year-old mummies, but their hair had either already rotted away or else crumbled to dust the moment anyone touched it.  A feather of the same age was likewise impossible unless it had been specially preserved in something like amber.  Or miraculously preserved, perhaps.  ‘Incorruptible’ corpses had been considered a sign of sainthood by the Catholic church until very recently, when scientists had demonstrated that most of the ‘miraculously’ undecayed saints had in fact been deliberately mummified.</p>
<p>So that was what Aleksio the Heretic had thought the Antichrist would come for at Judgment Day, Nat thought… did that have anything to do with Newton supposedly thinking he could turn himself into a god?  But under Aleksio’s worldview wouldn’t the Antichrist already <em>be</em> divine, no transmutation necessary?  “Do you have any of Aleksio’s writings?” she asked the Abbot.</p>
<p>“Of course not!” the man exclaimed.  “His contemporaries burned him so that others could not fall into similar error.”  He pulled his black cap off and rubbed his balding head, which was shiny with sweat.  “When I was young I was told he denied the humanity of Christ.  He said that nothing could be <em>part</em> divine, and so God the Son, God the Father, and God the Holy Spirit should not be spoken of separately.  To do so was to commit the sin of polytheism, to break the first Commandment.  So the older monks told me, at least.”</p>
<p>Nat began to walk up and down the little room as she thought about that.  “Mrs. Flamel said Newton thinks he can turn himself into a god… and Newton’s notebooks suggest that the Philosopher’s Stone needs a sample of something in order to make more of it.  Maybe Newton thought he could <em>become</em> the Antichrist?”  That sounded ridiculous, especially coming from the man who’d invented calculus and had defined gravity and light in ways that were still taught to schoolchildren.  But that Newton, the mathematical genius, also seemed to bear little resemblance to the chatty old man in cut-off shorts they’d spoken to in the restaurant in Athens.</p>
<p>“I do not know,” groaned the Abbot.  “What I’ve only just realized is that by listening to the gossip of my elders and passing it on, I’ve let Aleksio’s heresy continue!  My predecessors who burnt his writings would be so disappointed in me!”</p>
<p>“Are there any other ways into that room?” Sharon asked.</p>
<p>The Abbot blinked and frowned at her, as if not sure why she would ask.  “What does it matter?  The relic is gone!”</p>
<p>“If we can find out how the thief got in, maybe we can figure out where he went after,” Sharon explained.  She glanced around at the others, and got several nods of understanding.  They all knew who they were probably looking for.  “I’m a detective.  I do this for a living.  You should call the police.”</p>
<p>“The police will want money,” the Abbot complained.</p>
<p>“Then let us take a look,” Nat suggested.  “Our job, according to the Queen of England, is to investigate threats to the realm related to archaeology.”  Not that it had ever been formalized in so many words.  “Holy relics are old enough to qualify, and the Antichrist would be a threat to the UK as much as anywhere else.”</p>
<p>“Thank you,” said the Abbot.  “I will pray for all of you, for your souls and for your success.  I…” he started to get up, but swayed on his feet, and Sir Stephen and Allen hurried to help him sit down again before he fell over.  “Thank you,” the man repeated.  “Perhaps I’ll just finish my beer first.”</p>
<p>Once the Abbot had recovered enough to stand, they went back downstairs to the little cell where the relic had been kept, and looked around.  There wasn’t much to see – the room was tiny and there was almost nothing in it.  It was plain to Nat that the thief couldn’t have gotten in through the same door they had, not when the old iron hinges shrieked like banshees every time they were opened.  Even if the monk keeping watch over the reliquary had nodded off, the sound would definitely have woken him.  Although, she reminded herself with a glance at Clint, there were ways around that.</p>
<p>Clint himself had thought of it, too.  “Are any of the monks deaf?” he asked the Abbot.</p>
<p>“<em>Deff</em>?”  The Abbot echoed the English word as if he’d never heard it before.</p>
<p>Clint took out one of his hearing aids and showed it to him.</p>
<p>“Oh!  Who cannot hear!”  The Abbot nodded, understanding.  “One or two, who are very old, but they do not take turns in the chamber.  Kneeling on the cold stone is not healthy for them at their age.”</p>
<p>“That means the thief got in silently.”  Nat thought for a moment… Newton was over three hundred and fifty years old.  He might know things about this place that the monks living here had forgotten.  She started feeling her way along the walls, looking for another entrance.  Secret passages through old stone buildings were extremely impractical, the sort of thing people read about in storybooks rather than anything that existed in real life, but that was hardly grounds to dismiss them.  Statues coming to life, magical shields, immortality potions, and men who spoke to birds were <em>also</em> things out of fairy tales, and yet here they were.  Best not to think about it too hard.</p>
<p>If there <em>were</em> a secret passage, though, it was very well-hidden indeed.  There were no seams in the stones or bricked-up doorways that could offer an entry point, and nowhere sounded hollow when Nat knocked on it.  “Can we see some of the surrounding rooms?” she asked the Abbot.</p>
<p>“There are no surrounding rooms,” he replied.  “This chapel is the deepest part of the church.  On either side of it there is only the old cemetery.”</p>
<p>That meant the only possibility left was <em>up</em>.  Nat raised her head to look at the light slanting through the grates.  Nobody could take up the church floor, and the ground all around it was paved with cobblestones.  How could anyone have gotten in without disturbing the monk on watch?</p>
<p>The same thing must have occurred to Sharon, who drew a troubling conclusion from it.  “Who was in here the last couple of nights?” she asked the Abbot.  “Is there a schedule for whose turn it is?”</p>
<p>“If any of them had seen or heard anything, then surely…” the Abbot began.</p>
<p>“That’s not why I’m asking,” said Sharon.</p>
<p>It took him a moment to realize what she <em>was</em> implying, and he reacted with horror.  “You can’t think one of the brothers…”</p>
<p>“We have to explore every possibility,” said Sharon.  “It’s hard to imagine how anyone could have gotten in secretly, so it stands to reason that it must have been someone who had a reason to be in here.”</p>
<p>“I will summon them,” said the Abbot, but he was still deeply unhappy with the idea.</p>
<p>Sharon took Sir Stephen’s arm.  “You’re the saint,” she told him.  “You ply them with forgiveness, I’ll threaten them with hellfire.”</p>
<p>The Abbot got what looked like a child’s school exercise book out of his desk, and flipped through the schedules of prayers and chores inside it.  He wrote up a list of men for Sharon and Sir Stephen to question.  As they settled down with the first one in the Abbot’s office, Natasha had another idea.</p>
<p>“Father,” she said, taking the Abbot aside.  “The light comes into that little room from grates in the floor of the church, so is the church open to the public all night?”</p>
<p>“The doors of the House of God are always open,” the Abbot replied.  “There is even a midnight service, although not many people attend.”</p>
<p>“So it’s open and mostly empty.”  Nat nodded.  “Clint?”</p>
<p>Clint wasn’t looking at her, and had not realized she was talking to him.  She tugged his sleeve to get his attention.</p>
<p>“You still got that fishhook arrow?” she asked.</p>
<p>He smiled and pulled it out.  “I knew it would be good for something!”</p>
<p>They returned to the church and took a look at the grates in the floor.  There were six of these, each about four by four inches.  Four of them were drains, located at the bottom of gentle slopes.  The two at the altar end, however, were slightly elevated instead so that water would run <em>away</em> from them.  Nat stuck her fingers into one and found it was easily removed, and when she shone a flashlight through, she found she was almost directly above the reliquary.</p>
<p>“Give me the hook,” she held out a hand to Clint.</p>
<p>While he and the Abbot watched, Natasha reeled out the line and let the fishhook down into the chamber below.  It was almost impossible to see what she was doing even <em>with</em> the flashlight, but by moving it carefully, she found she could catch the handles on the door and pull them open.</p>
<p>“It would be awkward,” she said, “and you’d be lucky to do it without making a noise, but if you were <em>sure</em> the monk on watch was asleep I think a hook on a string would do the trick.”  She pulled it back up, frowning as she considered the possible complications.  “On the other hand… you’d have to pull the entire bird up, take the feather out and replace it, and then lower it back down again.  Then you’d have to put it back <em>in</em> the reliquary and close the doors.  It would take a lot of practice.”  And any noise might wake the monk, who would raise the alarm.  Perhaps if you gave him some kind of sedative?</p>
<p>Could a homunculus have the skills to do that?  They only knew what Newton told them they knew, as well as a few other things that seemed to slip out of his head in the process.  Did that include practiced abilities, like playing the piano or retrieving a reliquary with a hook?  But the monks would surely have noticed if he’d been trying it before.  Could he make homunculi who could do things he <em>couldn’t</em>?</p>
<p>“All things considered, it would be way easier to just pay off one of the monks,” she decided.  “If Brother Luka wouldn’t help him, he’d just find somebody else who was willing.”</p>
<p>The Abbot sighed heavily.  “Then let us see what your friends have learned from them,” he said.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. The Homunculinus</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The rest of the monks were waiting to be questioned in the hallway outside the Abbot’s office.  Every single one of them looked terrified, their eyes darting back and forth between their colleagues as if asking, <em>was it him?  Was it </em>him<em>?</em>  The ones who’d already been spoken to had wandered off into the cloister, where they stood around talking in small groups, except for one who was standing next to a potted orange tree, distractedly pulling leaves off it and shredding them.  The Abbot went and guided him away from the unfortunate plant, quietly reminding him that trees were also God’s creatures.</p><p>If Sharon and Sir Stephen hadn’t called the Abbot yet, it must mean that they hadn’t had any reason to doubt any of the monks so far.  Nat was normally good at spotting liars, and all these men were clearly nervous, but it wasn’t the kind of anxiety that accompanied guilt.  Of course, she also hadn’t seen any signs of lying from Barnes on the train.  Could there be a homunculus among the brothers?  If so, he couldn’t be one who looked like Jim.  The Abbot would have recognized Jim himself when the CAAP arrived.</p><p>Having saved the orange tree, the Abbot stood in the middle of the cloister and addressed the others in Montenegrin, which was close enough to standard Serbo-Croatian for Nat to follow it.  “<em>If any of you have doubted the teachings of the church</em>,” he said to them, “<em>if any of you have pondered the idea that perhaps Christ was not both fully god and fully man, or that evil might be made to serve good purposes, then confess it.  You will be absolved of your sins, and we will receive you back with open arms</em>.”</p><p>The monks stood silently.  Nat thought they must be wondering what they’d missed.  They would all consider each other brothers.  They’d lived together for years, and now there was the very real possibility that one or more of them believed in things they’d been taught were monstrous.  They must be trying to imagine how such a person would keep this terrible secret.</p><p>“<em>I’ve heard about the heresy of Aleksio</em>,” one of them ventured, “<em>and it made me want to learn more, but I never believed in it, not for a moment!  And I would never dare remove the sacred feather.  I would never even dare to look at it!  I always lowered my head in its presence</em>.”</p><p>Nat wondered whether that would be enough for him to have missed seeing it stolen from under his nose.  No… that would still be far too risky.</p><p>“<em>We are all fascinated by evil</em>.”  The Abbot came to put his arms around the monk who’d just spoken.  “<em>As long as we do not accept it into our hearts, we will be forgiven</em>.”</p><p>The other monk slumped against him, relieved.</p><p>Around an hour later, Sharon and Sir Stephen emerged from the office with the final monk.  Their posture was enough to tell Nat they hadn’t learned anything interesting, and Sharon was shaking her head as she approached the Abbot.</p><p>“I really don’t think it was any of them,” she said.  “They’re all terrified that the end of the world is coming and it’ll be their fault for not paying enough attention.”</p><p>“That’s good to hear,” the Abbot said.  “Not good that they’re afraid, of course, but good that none of us did this thing.”</p><p>“I knew what you meant,” Sharon assured him.  “Would I be allowed to dust the dove for fingerprints?  I’ll need your prints, too, to eliminate them.  I know you handled it.”</p><p>“Of course,” the Abbot said.</p><p>“Thank you.  I’ll need to find some powder.”</p><p>Clint spoke up.  “If it’s okay with everybody,” he said, “I know we’re having a crime scene, but I’m exhausted.  May I go back to the hotel and get some sleep finally?”</p><p>“Me too?” Sam chimed in quickly, as if he’d just been waiting for somebody else to say something.  Jim nodded eagerly, and Allen, who’d been sitting watching the monks in the cloister, stifled a yawn.</p><p>Sharon looked sheepish.  “Of course, “ she said.  “Sorry, I didn’t think about… obviously, go ahead.  We’ll probably head back there ourselves once we’ve dusted for prints.  We all need sleep.”  She looked up at Sir Stephen, who nodded very seriously even though he was the wrong person to ask.  They all knew he could go several days without sleep.</p><p>The group therefore split u again.  Sharon and Sir Stephen stayed behind, to finish their initial investigation.  The rest of the party – Nat, Sam, Allen, Clint, and Jim – hiked back down to the hotel to nap.  Going <em>down</em> the steep path back to Kotor was almost as difficult as climbing <em>up</em> it, and by the time they crammed themselves into the tiny elevator at the Hotel Vadar, they were all but falling over.</p><p>“Do you need me to carry you?” Nat asked, as Allen yawned again in the middle of undoing the lock.</p><p>“I think I’ll make it as far as the bed,” he replied, and opened the door.  “Ladies first.”</p><p>Nat stepped into the room – and stopped cold.</p><p>She’d been relieved, when they checked in, to see that their room had a safe.  It meant they’d have somewhere to put the three Newton notebooks they’d taken from Santorini.  The safe was hidden under one of the beds, but now the bed skirt had been pulled up and tucked aside, and the metal door was open.  Only one book was still inside.</p><p>Nat dived on the safe, slammed it shut and turned the handle to lock it.  Behind her, Allen called out to the others.  Sam and Clint burst in and went straight to the open window – Clint already had an arrow on his bowstring by the time they arrived.  Jim shouted that he would check the hallway.  It was Allen, however, who first saw the intruder.</p><p>“Holy shit!” he exclaimed, then clapped both hands over his mouth, as if Natasha were five years old and he was worried about her hearing him swear.  Nat followed his gaze to the room’s desk.  A second book was underneath it, hiding in the shadows cast by the desk and chair.</p><p>On top of the notebook was a doll.  It <em>had</em> to be a doll, because it couldn’t possibly be anything else… but when it realized somebody had seen it, it tried to run.  It was a very, very small man, only a foot tall.</p><p>Most of Nat’s brain simply froze.  She’d seen a lot of unbelievable sights lately, on top of a lifetime of training to take things in stride, but this was too much even for her.  One small corner of her thoughts remained clear enough to observe that of <em>course</em> that was how Newton had gotten the relic out.  A tiny man could be lowered through the opening in the floor and get it out of the reliquary quickly and silently.</p><p>Then she realized that this impossible creature was going to escape.  “Catch it!” she ordered, pointing.</p><p>The five full-sized people surrounded the tiny man, and reached down trying to be the first to grab it.  It managed to slip between Sam and Jim and ran for the door, hoping to crawl underneath it.  Thinking fast, Nat grabbed the room’s metal garbage bin and brought it down, upside-down, on top of the thing.  Holding it there, she felt vibration as the little thief pounded on the sides, trying to escape.  Nat put a foot on top of the bin, took the ice tongs off the side table, and used them to hit the sides several times.  The noise inside would be deafening, or at least extremely uncomfortable, and would hopefully stun her prisoner long enough for her to seize it.</p><p>She lifted the bin and found the little thief – dressed in clothes that had probably been made for a Ken or similar doll – curled in a ball with its hands over its ears.  Natasha scooped it up. And it began to struggle.  It was something like holding a frightened rat, as the tiny creature kicked and squirmed, but stiffer and less likely to bite, and the human shape of the flailing limbs made Nat’s stomach clench.  It was difficult to resist the urge to throw this awful creature across the room.</p><p>“Oh, <em>no</em>,” Jim said.</p><p>Nat already had a hunch what he must have seen – and sure enough, when she inspected the tiny thief’s face, it was a miniature version of Jim’s.  That was <em>part</em> of an explanation, at least.  He was a small homunculus.</p><p>“Where is the feather?” Nat demanded of the little man.  “What is Newton going to use it for?”</p><p>She could see the little homunculus’ mouth move as it tried to answer her, but all she could hear was what sounded like a high-pitched whispering.  Its vocal cords were so small that the sound they made was almost out of the range of human hearing.</p><p>“Talk slow and deep,” she ordered him.  “Shout.”</p><p>It seemed to be trying, but the response was still inaudible.  There wasn’t enough air in the creature’s lungs to make a meaningful noise.</p><p>“Sharon’s got her little recorder,” Sam suggested.  “We can have him talk into that, and then slow it down.”</p><p>“That would work,” Nat said with a nod.  “We’ll just have to hang on to him until she comes back.  Grab me the ice bucket, would you?”</p><p>They put the bucket on the desk, and Nat lowered the tiny thief into it.  It splayed out its arms and legs to try to catch the edge and escape, but she forced it in, and they put the lid on top.  After leaving it there for a minute or so, just to prove she meant business, Nat took the lid off again and looked down at their captive.  It was now sitting cross-legged in the bottom, arms folded across its miniature chest.</p><p>“All right,” said Nat.  “We’ll talk by tapping, Fox Sisters style.  Bang on the side once for <em>yes</em>, twice for <em>no</em>.  Got it?”</p><p>The little man thought about that a moment, then reached out and knocked once on the side of the ice bucket with a <em>ting</em>.</p><p>“Perfect,” Natasha nodded.  “Did you steal the feather from the monastery?”</p><p>It knocked once.</p><p>“And gave it to Neustadt?” Nat asked.</p><p>One knock.</p><p>“Do you know what he wanted to use it for?”</p><p>The little man knocked twice.</p><p>Of course he didn’t… why would Newton tell him?  It wasn’t anything the little thief needed to know.  She couldn’t help but wonder, though, what in the world Newton <em>had</em> said to him about what he was and why he was so tiny.  She wouldn’t be able to get an answer to that until Sharon came back.</p><p>“Did you get the third book out of the room already?” Nat asked.</p><p>One knock.</p><p>“Is it hidden somewhere nearby?”</p><p>Two knocks.</p><p>“Did you already give it to Neustadt?”</p><p>One knock.</p><p>Nat looked around at her companions.  “Then he’s probably still in the area.  This little guy couldn’t go very far.  Somebody go walk around the block and look for him.”  Although with Clint and Sam haven’t already looked out the window, it was very likely that Newton knew they’d come back and had already fled.</p><p>Sam was already on his way to the door.  “On it,” he said, and motioned to Clint.  “Come on.”  They left to search the surrounding streets, while Nat, Jim, and Allen stood around looking into the ice bucket.</p><p>“How did he do that?” Jim asked, his voice shaking again.  “I just… <em>I</em> could have been made like that.  Or as a giant.  Or <em>anything</em>.”</p><p>“He made you for what he needed you for,” Nat said.  “The spies and assassins were made to blend in.  This one was made to get into places nobody ought to be able to get into.”  They were going to have to be extremely careful with their belongings from now on.</p><p>While the men kept an eye on the little thief, Nat flipped through the two remaining notebooks.  The one with the equations was gone, which suggested it was the one Newton considered the most important… or had it simply been on top of the pile?  Nat didn’t remember what order she’d stacked them up in.  The other two were still there, and there was no sign that any pages had been torn out.  She tucked them into her jacket pockets on either side.  From now on, she decided, she would keep them on her person at all times.  Even when she slept.</p><p>It was nearly an hour before Clint and Sam got back.  They came into the room with expressions that spoke for them.  They hadn’t found a thing.</p><p>“He probably heard us shouting through the window, and made straight for the city gate,” was Sam’s analysis.  The tiny medieval streets of old Kotor were too narrow and twisty to bring a car into, but there was a modern main road just outside.</p><p>“Or he saw us go into the building and left then,” Nat said.  She took the lid off the bucket again and peeked in at their prisoner.  “Did you hear that?” she asked.  “Newton abandoned you.  He didn’t know or care what we would do to you, but you’re expendable to him.”</p><p>The little thief said nothing, although whether out of spite or because he knew they couldn’t hear him, that was impossible to say.</p><p>“Did he tell you that you’re dying?” Nat asked.</p><p>There was no reaction, or at least, none that she could see.</p><p>“We have something that can help you live longer,” she said.  “Think about that while you decide what you’re going to say to us when our friends return.”  She put the lid back on, gently, and sat down on the end of the bed.  Would this tiny homunculus last a week or so, like Desrosiers had said Jim, would?  Or would he vanish faster, because he was made of fewer cells.  If only there were some way to contact her and ask.</p>
<hr/><p>Natasha had been trained to go without sleep, ignoring her body’s complaints until she was in a place where she could sleep <em>safely</em>.  But of course the fact that she <em>could</em> go without didn’t mean it was <em>good</em> for her, so when she finally did crash, she crashed hard.  She and the others tried to stay up for a little while, expecting Sharon and Sir Stephen back, but it had already been sunset when they’d walked into the hotel room, and it didn’t take them long to give up.  By the time Nat’s head hit the pillow she was already half asleep, and she didn’t wake up until she was startled by a loud metallic crash.</p><p>She sat up with a start, heart pounding, hands already up in a fighting position.  Next to her, Allen rolled over, got up on his elbows, and looked around.  In the other bed, Jim yelped and Sam groaned and pulled a pillow over his head.</p><p>Clint, belly-down on the cot with his hearing aids out, kept snoring.</p><p>It took a moment for Nat to figure out what had just happened, and then she saw it – the ice bucket they’d left on the desk was gone.</p><p>She threw the covers back and hurried over for another look.  Before turning in, they’d put the lid on the bucket and then set a hardcover book on top of that, so the tiny homunculus wouldn’t be able to push it off.  It seemed that the little thief had tried to escape, instead, by knocking the bucket over from within.  It had rolled off the desk and landed on the floor, spilling its contents – and the lid and the book had landed on top of them.  Whether it something had hit the thief’s hyoid bone or whether it had simply been crushed was impossible to say, but there was nothing left now except a handful of dust inside a set of doll’s clothing.</p><p>“Poor little guy,” said Allen.</p><p>Jim turned away.  “I need some fresh air,” he announced, and climbed over Clint’s cot to go stand on the room’s narrow balcony.  This finally woke Clint himself, who sat up, blinking.</p><p>“What’s going on?” he asked through a yawn.</p><p>“The little guy is dead,” said Nat, checking her pockets.  She’d been sleeping in her jacket so she could keep the journals on her.  They were still there.</p><p>It seemed to take Clint a moment to remember who <em>the little guy</em> was, or perhaps to read her lips, but then he lowered his head.  “Oh.”</p><p>Allen was the one who knelt down to begin cleaning up, but Nat put a hand on his shoulder to stop him.  “Leave it,” she said.  “I don’t know if Sharon and Sir Steve will believe us, otherwise.”</p><p>“Sharon and Sir Steve have been with us for everything that’s happened so far,” said Sam.  “Why would they stop believing in it <em>now</em>?”</p><p>“Just in case,” Nat decided.</p><p>When Jim realized they weren’t going to clean up just yet, he decided to remain out on the balcony for the time being.  The rest of the group just hung around awkwardly, trying not to look at what was on the floor as they waited for Sharon and Sir Stephen to return.  Everyone was still tired, but nobody felt like going back to bed – except Clint, who was soon flat on his back on the cot again.  He was clearly one of those fabled <em>people who can sleep through anything</em>, and Nat didn’t know whether to be disgusted or jealous.</p><p>Finally, well past midnight, Sharon and Sir Stephen got in.  They arrived yawning and plainly ready for bed themselves, but that changed at once when they saw the somber faces in the room.</p><p>“What happened?” Sharon asked warily.</p><p>“I’m guessing you didn’t find any fingerprints on the gold bird,” said Nat.</p><p>“Only the Abbot’s,” said Sharon.</p><p>“We tried your idea,” Sir Stephen added, “to retrieve the dove and get the feather out using only a hook on a string, but we could not make it work.  These alchemists may say they are not sorcerers, but I am convinced the theft could only have been carried out by magic.”</p><p>“You’re almost right,” Nat said.  “Take a look at this.”</p><p>Jim had peeked through the curtains when he’d heard Sharon and Sir Stephen come in, but closed them again quickly when he realized they were about to get a tour of the tiny accident scene.  The rest of the group explained about the little thief and the fate he’d come to, and Sharon and Sir Stephen listened in wide-eyed horror.  Allen then tried again to clean up, but this time it was Sir Stephen who stopped him.</p><p>“What are you going to do with the dust?” he asked.</p><p>“I don’t know,” Allen admitted.  “Probably just throw it away.”  He winced.  “Now that I <em>say</em> it, that sounds awful, doesn’t it?”</p><p>“Neustadt seems to think his creations have no souls,” Sir Stephen said, “but we do not know that he is correct.  We should bury these remains, not throw them away like rubbish.”</p><p>Sharon found the box their deck of cards had come in, and painted over it with white nail polish to cover the pictures of erotic pottery.  They brushed the dust and the doll’s clothing into this makeshift casket and wrapped in in Kleenex.  They would give it to the Abbot, they decided, to be buried in consecrated ground.  Just in case.</p><p>Once that was done, Natasha let Jim back inside, and Sharon and Sir Stephen admitted unhappily that they hadn’t learned anything new from their long day of investigation.  All the monk seemed to <em>know</em> about the seventeenth century heresy trial of Brother Aleksio, but they considered it a cautionary tale, an example of what <em>not</em> to do.  None of them believed in what he had, and many were honestly terrified that with the feather gone, the end of the world was imminent.  Brother Luka was still in the hospital and could not be questioned about his beliefs, but the young man they’d talked to in the church had told them as best he could about the man – a German, identifying himself as a collector of Byzantine art – who’d come to talk with him.  They’d argued, and the stranger had left.</p><p>“So… Luka wouldn’t give Newton the relic, so Newton made a tiny little man and sent <em>him</em> to steal it,” said Sharon.  “I wonder what he <em>said</em> to it.  Jim, he told you that you’re an art student who was doing him a favour?”</p><p>“I don’t really remember,” Jim confessed.  “It’s fuzzy.  The first thing I definitely know happened to me is spotting her at the café,” he looked at Nat, “and recognizing she was one of the people he’d told me to watch.”  His eyes wandered, not for the first time, to the tissue-wrapped card box on the nightstand.  “I’m lucky, aren’t I?”</p><p>Natasha decided it would be kindest to him – and most expedient to their quest – if she changed the subject.  “Well, if Newton also wants these journals back, then there must be something important in them,” she said.  “Either something <em>he</em> needs, or something he doesn’t want <em>us</em> to read.”  She took them out of her pockets.  “Those of us who think we can sleep probably should… but those who can’t or don’t want to, let’s stay awake and get back to translating these notebooks.  We’ll do, say, three hour shifts.”  That would allow both groups to grab a little more sleep before breakfast.  “Then somebody will be awake with the books at all times, in case Newton has more pocket homunculi around.”</p><p>Sir Stephen insisted that he didn’t need to sleep, and Jim said he couldn’t sleep anymore – Nat suspected he was afraid of having nightmares.  Sam volunteered to stay u, too, so while Clint, Sharon, and Allen napped, the other four got some strong coffee from the hotel’s room service and sat down with the books again.</p><p>Nat wanted to work more efficiently now, so she assigned everybody three or four pages, and they set about writing things down and putting them through the cipher.  Natasha herself was the only one who could read the Greek well enough to figure out a translation, so after two pages of her own, she sat back and waited for the others to give her the ones they’d finished with.</p><p>The writings had been very astronomical and chemical at first, and made very little sense.  Nat suspected another alchemist would have understood them at once, but she didn’t have the necessary background.  As they got deeper into the first journal, however, the handwriting began to get harder to read and spelling mistakes started to appear – and when Nat waded through the mess, she found that the content was changing, too, growing more and more religious.  She remembered reading that Newton had a nervous breakdown at some point in his life, when he’d become paranoid and accused his friends of plotting against him… and hadn’t Desrosiers mentioned him suffering from mercury poisoning?  Either or both might be to blame for what he’d written.</p><p>The place where it really began to sound frightening, and the place where the link with Aleksio the Heretic became clear, was a page with a question scrawled across the top in English: <em>why is Judas in hell?</em></p><p>The text below was not encrypted, but it was still in Greek, some of it in the Latin alphabet and some not.  Most of it was utter nonsense, just lists of words and phrases like <em>what is betrayal</em> and <em>silver is naught but corrupted gold</em>.  At the last line of the page, however, the Greek changed abruptly to English, and the thoughts it was outlining became much clearer even as the handwriting grew all but indecipherable.  It was as if a mental fog had lifted, and the writer could now see the mountains of madness beyond.</p><p><em>The betrayal of Judas was necessary for our redemption</em>, it said, <em>for without Christ’s crucifixion, none of us could be saved.  In ‘betraying’ Christ, Judas was doing God’s will and making His greatest gift to the world possible.  Judas is not the greatest sinner, but the greatest saint</em>.</p><p>The next line was a single sentence at the bottom of the page, in block capitals with a few Greek letters thrown in just to make it sound a little madder: <em>THERE CAN BE NO EVIL IF GOD IS TRULY GOOD</em>.</p><p>No wonder Newton had hidden these books, Nat thought.  She was pretty sure the Church of England in the seventeenth century would have considered that one sentence heretical enough for a burning.  She turned the page.</p><p>
  <em>It is God’s plan that the world must end.  Without the Anti-Christ there can be no Harrowing of Hell, no raising of the dead, no forgiveness of the ignorant.  In Heaven Judas will sit at Christ’s right hand, and Anti-Christ on a throne at his left, of equal height.  To be truly opposite to Christ, Anti-Christ cannot be human, but divine.</em>
</p><p><em>The Holy Spirit was fully divine, uncorrupted by human flesh.  The Philosopher’s Stone shall transmute flesh to divine matter, and by the release of energy I have calculated, will lay waste to the Earth and make room for Christ’s Kingdom</em>.</p><p>Nat closed the book with a thump, dropped it on the table and rubbed her temples with her fingertips.</p><p>The others turned to look at her in confusion.  “What?” asked Jim.</p><p>Nat opened the book again and re-read it silently.  There it was, in black and white – or at least, in faded sepia on yellowed rag paper.  The message was about as explicit as it could have been without spelling it out.  Newton was stone-cold crazy.  He thought he was going to become the antichrist and bring about the end of the world.  It would have been hilarious if it hadn’t been written by a legendary genius… and if Desrosiers hadn’t already told them that the Philosopher’s Stone was potentially destructive.</p><p>“Nat?” asked Sam.  “You okay?”</p><p>“Read this.”  Nat gave him the book.</p><p>They passed it around, and everyone took a look in turn.  Sir Stephen only read the first few lines, then thrust it away as if the book had tried to bite him.  “This is madness!” he protested.  “Blasphemy!”</p><p>“Desrosiers was worried he didn’t know that the Philosopher’s Stone might blow up in his face,” said Nat, “but it looks like he does, and he’s counting on it.  I don’t care about the bit where he’s trying to turn himself into a god.”  Natasha did not believe in that.  “But I do care about the whole ‘nuclear explosion’ thing.”</p><p>Madame Desrosiers had talked about Thira and Tunguska.  Nat had seen pictures of Tunguska, with the trees flattened for hundreds of miles in every direction around the point where the blast had occurred.  And they’d <em>been</em> to Santorini, for a good first-hand look at the immense crater and the dry, rocky wasteland around it.  They hadn’t had the opportunity, but it was possible to visit ancient Akrotiri, the Minoan city that had been destroyed in that catastrophe.</p><p>“If he’s gonna do it in the middle of Australia, he probably won’t hurt anybody,” said Sam hopefully.  “Maybe a few kangaroos.”</p><p>“Wait, you said this guy is Sir Isaac Newton!” Jim put in.  “He was the first person to mathematically quantify energy.  He <em>knows</em> how much he’ll need to lay waste the earth.  If he wants to put a crack in the planet he’ll have figured out exactly how to do that.”</p><p>He spoke with absolute certainty, and Natasha didn’t doubt him for a moment – who better to know what Newton was capable of than his unfortunate creation.  Fine time, she thought, for them to have given the Holy Grail to an American who’d promised to launch it into space!  Right now the ability to re-write history, perhaps to take alchemy out of it or to retroactively destroy the key hidden in the mummy case, would have been really useful.</p><p>But Nat knew perfectly well that even if the Grail had been available, she wouldn’t have used it… so what in the world were they going to do instead?</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. The Face of Evil</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Up until now, the Committee for the Appraisal of Archaeological Peril hadn’t been sure if they were <em>really</em> what was needed here.  Desrosiers had insisted there was no <em>magic</em> involved in the situation, and with the mummy of Sitamun now out of the picture, there was precious little archeology.  Now that they knew they were stopping an insane immortal super-scientist from bringing about the end of mankind, however… that certainly wasn’t under anybody <em>else</em>’s jurisdiction.  They were the only ones here.  That was evidently enough to make it a job for the CAAP.</p>
<p>When they others awoke for dinner, they explained what they had found.  Sharon looked skeptical at first, but changed her mind when she saw how concerned Sir Stephen and Jim both were.  Allen, whose experience of the supernatural was intimate indeed, went very pale.  Clint just groaned, as if he couldn’t believe he was going to have to help save the world <em>again</em>.</p>
<p>“The question is how we’re going to find him,” said Nat.  “He’s obviously long-gone from Kotor, and he’s got the other notebook… is that everything he needs?”</p>
<p>“I have looked at the maps and it is a long way to Australia,” said Sir Stephen.  “The journey would be years in my own time, but I fear in this age of trains and airplanes it may be only hours.”</p>
<p>“No more than a day, anyway,” Nat agreed.  With his overnight head start, there was no way they could beat him there.  “Is he even going to Australia, though?  Desrosiers seemed to think that was a misdirection.”</p>
<p>“<em>That’s</em> who we need now, you know,” Sam said.  “Mrs. Flamel.  She may be pretty paranoid herself, but I doubt she wants to see the end of the world, and she knows this guy way better than we do.”</p>
<p>“You’re right,” said Nat, “but I don’t know if it’ll be any easier to find <em>her</em> than to find <em>him</em>.”  She chewed on her lip for a moment, then glanced at her purse, sitting on the floor by the night stand.  Visible inside it, tucked in between Nat’s wallet and a tourist map of Kotor, was the corner of the passport in the name of <em>Helene Desrosiers</em>.  Could it really be that simple?</p>
<p>Maybe it was.  Maybe the reason Desrosiers had agreed to leave it was in case they needed her again.</p>
<p>“Where’s the nearest French consulate?” Nat asked.</p>
<p>A quick internet search gave them the address and phone number of one in Cetinje, and Nat called them and explained in French that she’d found the passport, and would be pleased to return it to its owner if somebody could locate her.  The man at the embassy thanked her and promised to look into it, and then there was nothing to do but wait.</p>
<p>They ate dinner at the hotel restaurant, and then it was time for Sir Stephen, Sam, Nat, and Jim to take their turn sleeping.  Sir Stephen had always been able to sleep anywhere, and so could Sam – it was a skill soldiers mastered quickly.  Natasha, however, was a spy, brought up to always watch for a knife tickling her back.  Her earlier nap, interrupted by the death of the little homunculus, had taken the edge off her exhaustion and now she was on the alert, listening for tiny footsteps.  If these creatures could be made that small, what was to stop another one from creeping in and cutting all their throats while they slept?  Supposedly the others were on watch, but they were all tired, too.  What if they nodded off and missed something, as the monk in the chapel must have done?</p>
<p>With these sorts of thoughts running endlessly through her head, every tiny sound kept jolting Nat awake, until she was nearly ready to give up on sleep entirely.  Before she <em>quite</em> reached that stage, Jim beat her to it.  She’d been hearing him tossing and turning – now he got up, put his clothes back on, and walked out the door.</p>
<p>The simplest theory was that he just couldn’t sleep.  They all had a lot on their minds right now, and Jim even more than the rest of them – he was the one whose life was in the balance.  But that same nasty suspicious streak that had Nat listening out for invading homunculi also told her that for all she knew, <em>this</em> might be the moment when he finally decided to betray them.  She slid out of bed and followed him.</p>
<p>Allen was snoozing in the armchair next to the bed.  He didn’t even wake up.</p>
<p>Natasha found Jim in the square outside.  It was getting late and had clouded over, with thunder rumbling in the distance, so the plaza was now empty of all but a very few people.  Some were enjoying a late-night dinner in one of the restaurants, and a few couples were dancing to the music of a string quartet, but Jim was not with them.  He’d sat down on the flight of steps that led up to a souvenir shop on the other side of the square.  The business was closed, with its grille down, but he was sitting there scratching the head of a fat gray cat that had come up to see him.  The cat was enjoying the attention very much – when Jim paused in petting it, it bumped its head against his hand, encouraging him to continue.</p>
<p>Jim didn’t look up, but he must have noticed Nat coming, because he said, “I didn’t go far.”</p>
<p>“I just wanted to make sure,” she said.</p>
<p>“No, you just don’t want your Dad to talk to me,” sighed Jim.</p>
<p>Nat hadn’t realized she was being that obvious about it.  She was normally good at hiding her emotions but jealousy… jealousy was one she wasn’t used to.  Growing up in the Red Room, she’d never been allowed to grow attached to something enough to feel jealous over it.  Part of her was relieved to think that meant she really did love Allen on some level and wasn’t just going through the motions, but another was ashamed, thinking about how her trainers would have disapproved.</p>
<p>“I’m worried about <em>you</em>, too,” she said.</p>
<p>“About me turning you over to Newton?” asked Jim.</p>
<p>That hadn’t been how she’d meant him to take it, but Nat wasn’t going to insult him by denying it.  She sat down on the stairs next to him.  “If it helps, I don’t think you’d do it on purpose,” she said.  “If he’d programmed you to do something, you wouldn’t be able to help it.  I was the same way with Allen, when he first appeared.”</p>
<p>Jim looked surprised by that.  “Your imaginary father?” he asked.  “How did that happen, anyway?”</p>
<p>“By accident,” said Nat.  “I’d told the people I worked with that my father was still alive, so if my cover were ever blown, I’d have an excuse to run off.  I would just say I was going to be with him after some accident or emergency.  Then I got a hold of a piece of the Holy Grail, which could make lies come true as long as somebody already believed in them.  I didn’t know what it was, and I had it in my hand while I was talking to the department secretary and she brought it up.  When I arrived back at the school, there he was, waiting for me.”</p>
<p>“Huh,” was all Jim said.</p>
<p>Nat wondered what he was thinking.  Maybe it was that even if Allen wasn’t Nat’s <em>real</em> father, he’d still come into the world with a family of sorts ready to look after him.  Sir Stephen hadn’t even had that, but he’d come to in a hospital, a place of care and safety, with Dr. Wilson watching over him.</p>
<p>Jim, on the other hand, had found himself in a strange city, with a man who claimed to be his creator calmly discussing Jim’s impeding death as if he weren’t even there.  He’d found a void where his memory and identity ought to be, leaving him with no past, no family, not even a name.  And the only people he’d felt he could turn to for help were deeply suspicious of him, while men with his face kept trying to do them harm.</p>
<p>A moment later, she learned that wasn’t it at all.  The next thing Jim said was, “how can somebody claim there’s no such thing as evil, and then make something like that little man?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” said Nat.</p>
<p>Jim shuddered.  “He could <em>talk</em>, even if we couldn’t hear him.  He must have been scared, trapped in that bucket with all of us towering over him.  He must have…”  He stopped, swallowed hard, and shook his head.  “How could somebody do <em>that</em>, and think it’s not <em>wrong</em>?”</p>
<p>“I’m not a good person to ask,” Nat admitted.  She was an atheist, after all – and even if she hadn’t been, she’d done plenty of things that could be considered evil, and most of them she hadn’t thought twice about.  “Evil is like truth,” she decided.  “It’s something we make up.”</p>
<p>Jim sighed heavily.</p>
<p>“Truth is what we, as a society, agree happened,” Nat explained.  “And right and wrong are what we agree is good and bad for us.  Our standards aren’t universal.  In India they used to do something called <em>sati</em>, in which a widow would commit suicide by throwing herself on her husband’s funeral pyre.  In their worldview, that was the best thing for both her and the surviving family.  The British were absolutely horrified by it and outlawed it – but the British were the ones who conquered India and forced the farmers to grow opium so they could sell it to China for tea.  So who were <em>they</em> to be arbiters of right and wrong?”</p>
<p>Jim didn’t say anything, so Nat just sat silently next to him.  She found her eyes drawn upwards to the sky, which looked pitch black for a moment… then lightning flickered somewhere up in the clouds, illuminating them from within.  The air was starting to smell like rain.  That must be why the string quartet had finished playing and were now packing up their instruments.</p>
<p>Natasha had done a lot of thinking over the past few years, about what right and wrong might be.  She’d tried to come up with a definition that didn’t <em>justify</em> her past actions, but which maybe explained what she’d been thinking at the time.  It had not been an easy task.</p>
<p>“I think,” she said, “if we’re going to <em>define</em> evil… then evil has to be something we <em>choose</em>.  You can do something <em>wrong</em> by accident, but it’s not really <em>evil</em> unless we do it on purpose and deliberately disregard the consequences.”  The Red Death’s plan had been to re-write history because he’d wanted a crown, and he didn’t care if his subjects lived in medieval squalor.  Newton wanted a crown in the afterlife, and he didn’t care if he and everybody else had to die for him to get it.</p>
<p>“Yeah,” said Jim.  “Yeah… I guess.”  He followed her eyes up to the gathering clouds, then looked down again, at the cat rubbing against his knee.  “I keep telling myself that at least I got to see all this.  Athens was nice.  Santorini is a place you see in calendars.  I’ve never heard of Kotor but now that I’m here it’s gorgeous, with the mountains and the old buildings and the little streets.  I got to see all this stuff that normal people wait years to see.  But I’m gonna die here, and I’ll never… I’ll never have the stuff those normal people have.  I’ll never have a home, or a pet, or… seeing this isn’t the same when you’re not going <em>back</em> anywhere after.</p>
<p>“And <em>when</em> I die,” he added, his voice beginning to thicken with suppressed emotion, “I won’t <em>leave</em> anything.  I don’t have any family or friends who’ll miss me, I don’t have any property to leave.  I won’t even be a body they can chuck in a grave and call <em>John Doe</em> or whatever the Slavic equivalent is.  I’ll just <em>dissolve</em> like the rest and I might as well never have existed.”  He wiped at the corners of his eyes with one thumb.</p>
<p>“We’ll remember you,” said Nat.</p>
<p>“You’ll remember me as something a crazy wizard made,” said Jim.  “You won’t remember me as a person because even <em>I</em> don’t know who I am as a person.  I haven’t had time.  Your friend Sir Steve will remember me as the guy who looked like his friend Buckeye, and Buckeye was probably a great person but even if I’m a clone of him or something that doesn’t make me the <em>same</em>.  Steve’s gonna remember Buckeye, not me.”</p>
<p>“You said you’re an art student,” Nat reminded him.  “You’re interested in Greek temples and sculpture.  You’re obviously very introspective, and you find it difficult to stop thinking so you can sleep.  You have a strong self-preservation instinct… and you like cats.”  She reached over to stroke the one Jim was now ignoring.  “That’s you as a person.  I promise to remember that.”</p>
<p>“Thanks,” he said weakly, wiping his nose on his arm.  “I, uh… look, I don’t think you like me very much, and from what Steve’s told me I understand that you’re pretty tough and might break my neck.  But Sharon’s spoken for and I don’t actually know any other women so, uh…”  Jim gulped, then smiled sheepishly.  “I know this must sound really stupid, but I’ve just realized it’s one more think I’ve never done and otherwise I never <em>will</em> do it, so I might as well ask.  Would you go to bed with me?”</p>
<p>It was a very unexpected question, and after visibly forcing himself to spit it out, Jim winced and gritted his teeth as if afraid Nat was about to throw him over the city wall into Bocca Bay.  Maybe that was why Natasha laughed aloud – or maybe it was because that was easily the most self-consciously pathetic proposition she’d ever heard.  Jim looked like a puppy asking for a treat he knew he wouldn’t get, and she could tell he immediately regretted it.</p>
<p>“Sorry,” he said.  “That was… that was dumb.”</p>
<p>“Sure,” Nat decided.  “I’ll do that.”  Why not?”</p>
<p>Jim stared at her.  “What?  Really?”</p>
<p>“It’s been a long time since I slept with anyone,” she admitted.  “When I was working for the Russian government, they would have me seduce men – and sometimes women, in order to drug or kill them.  I don’t like casual hookups because it reminds me of that, but I also can’t really get into a long-term relationship because…”  She shrugged.  “Those are built on honesty, and for the last few years my life has been a lie.  I’ve been using a fake name, working under forged qualifications, and I’ve got a whole life story I can tell people but none of it’s true.  You and I are being honest.  I’m a former spy and you’re something a crazy wizard made.”</p>
<p>That made Jim laugh, too.  “A match made in heaven, eh?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Oh, I don’t know if I’d go <em>that</em> far,” said Nat.</p>
<p>There was another rumble.  Nat leaned forward to look up again, and saw more lightning flickering.  The gray cat gave a stretched, then scampered off down a side street.</p>
<p>Jim seemed to take that as a sign.  “I guess we should go in, too,” he said.</p>
<p>The first dark spots began to appear on the stone cobbles in front of them.  “I think you’re right,” said Nat.  “If we don’t, we’ll be trapped in this doorway until it stops.”</p>
<p>They hurried across the square, and darted into the hotel foyer just moments ahead of the rain.  Lightning split the sky and thunder followed on its heels, and suddenly rain was <em>teeming</em> down, rattling on the old tile roofs and flowing in rivulets between the paving stones.  Natasha hoped the cat had made it back indoors.</p>
<p>“Whew,” said Jim.  “If even the weather’s telling me to go back to sleep, I guess I ought to take the hint.”</p>
<p>He was trying to let her out of sleeping with him, Nat thought.  He either figured she’d been joking, or was so embarrassed about having asked her in the first place that he hoped they could both forget about it.  Natasha could have let it drop, but she decided not to.  He’d made the request in earnest and she’d accepted it likewise.  Now was not the time to think of the ways in which sex made people feel obligated towards each other and how she could take advantage of those – instead, she focused on how it would help Jim feel like a real person who’d made an impression on the world.  And, as she’d said, it had been a long time for her.</p>
<p>So right there in the lobby of the Hotel Vadar, with other guests all around him, she took him by the shoulders and kissed him full on the lips.  Nat felt him freeze, and expected him to relax into it once he realized she was serious – but he didn’t.  When she stepped back a moment later, he was still staring at her.</p>
<p>“I… uh…” he began.</p>
<p>“If you didn’t want to, you shouldn’t have asked.  You’re stuck with me now,” she told him, and kissed him again.  This time, he put his arms around her and pulled her a little closer, which was much better.</p>
<p>“You taste like lemonade,” he told her.</p>
<p>She’d had lemon gelato for dessert.  “Really?” she asked.  “Because <em>you</em> taste like Perenelle’s elixir.”</p>
<p>Jim’s mouth dropped open in horror.  “I do?”</p>
<p>“Just kidding,” she assured him, and took his hand to lead him back upstairs.  The truth was that he’d tasted of salt, melancholy, and the Abbot’s beer – exactly as she would have expected for a man obsessed with his own mortality.  Perhaps by the strictest definition, Jim was not a human being, but if that were the case then he was a damned convincing simulation.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Nat woke the next morning with her head on Jim’s shoulder and her hand on his abdomen.  He was still asleep and breathing softly, which made her smile – if their lovemaking had done nothing else for him, it had at least tricked his body’s chemistry into putting him properly to sleep.  The others were already up and gone, leaving them alone in the room, but anyone who’d been in or out would have seen them together and realized what it meant.  She thought about that for a moment, and decided she didn’t care.</p>
<p>She reached for her phone to see what time it was, and found it was almost eight.  She had voicemail.</p>
<p>It turned out to be from the French consulate in Cetinje.  <em>Madame Jones</em>, the woman on the recording said, <em>we will need you to bring that passport to us.  We have located Madame Desrosiers and it seems she had a second copy of the passport, which is not allowed.  We need to determine which is the genuine document</em>.</p>
<p>Nat set the phone down and gave Jim a shake.  “Hey, wake up,” she said.</p>
<p>“Hmm?” he asked, opening his eyes.</p>
<p>“Get dressed.”  Nat swung her legs over the edge of the bed and reached for her discarded shirt.  “We need to catch a bus.”</p>
<p>They found the others having breakfast at one of the tables in the square.  There were still puddles on the cobblestones from last night’s rain, but they were evaporating fast in the morning sunshine.  Shops were opening and the pigeons were out and about, snatching up bits of bread and bacon that fell from the diners’ tables.  The group was in the middle of an animated conversation when Nat arrived and pulled up a chair.</p>
<p>“Morning, everybody,” she said.  “I got a reply from the consulate!  They want us to turn in the passport, which may lead to Desrosiers being arrested, or might just make her run away again.  It depends on how she hears about it.  I’ve already called Fury and hopefully he can find out where she is, and we can track her down before the police do.”</p>
<p>This was greeted by silence – in fact, the conversation had ceased utterly the moment Nat opened her mouth.  Jim, who’d borrowed a chair from another table so he could sit on her right, had noticed it, too, and stared at the stanchions that divided the hotel dining area from the square.  There was a pigeon perched on one, grooming.</p>
<p>“So let’s eat,” Nat added, “and then we’ll catch the bus to Cetinje.”</p>
<p>“Is there something you want to share with the group?” Sam asked cynically.</p>
<p>Nat couldn’t help but roll her eyes.  So that was why they’d all stopped talking when she sat down – because they didn’t want her to know they’d been talking about <em>her</em>.  She’d known it wouldn’t be a secret, but she’d counted on this group of adults not to bother themselves about things that weren’t their business.</p>
<p>“Since you obviously already know, no,” she replied.</p>
<p>Sam at least had the grace to look ashamed of himself.  Allen, sitting next to him, stared at his plate as if deeply puzzled by his poached eggs on toast.</p>
<p>“Any more questions?” Nat asked.</p>
<p>Nobody had any.</p>
<p>“Good.”  She picked up a menu.  “Because I’m too hungry to answer them if you did.”</p>
<p>Jim didn’t say anything, which made her wonder if <em>he</em> thought he had anything to be ashamed of.  She hoped not.</p>
<p>The public transportation in Montenegro was very limited and not particularly dependable.  The tourist buses, on the other hand, went everywhere and kept a rigid schedule, but cost several times what was reasonable.  Theoretically the CAAP were still on government business and therefore passing all their expenses on to the crown, so they bought seats on a bus operated by <em>Explore! Tours</em> and rumbled off to Cetinje in air-conditioned comfort.  There was a tour guide on board, but she was easy to ignore.  The woman went through her spiel about the history and landscape in an automatic drone that made it clear she could have recited it in her sleep.</p>
<p>Nat was sitting next to Allen, with Sir Stephen and Jim behind them.  There was a general lack of conversation on the bus, partly because of the guide’s speech and partly because nobody could think of anything to say that wouldn’t have been awkward.  Nat was growing increasingly annoyed with them.  If she’d slept with Clint or Sir Stephen, that would have been a problem because the first had a wife and the second a girlfriend.  If she’d slept with Sam, it would have been unworthy of comment because both were single.  The same <em>should </em>have been true of her and Jim.</p>
<p>Until this morning it had seemed as if everybody in the group agreed that Jim counted as a person regardless of his origin.  They’d never even actually discussed it, it was just evident to them from the way he spoke and behaved… though Newton being a jerk who <em>deserved</em> to be wrong was probably also a factor.  Now it seemed that Natasha had assumed something the others had not.  It made her wonder, if they didn’t think <em>Jim</em> counted as a human being, what about Allen?  Or even Sir Stephen, who was also a product of the Holy Grail.  She doubted they’d ever thought twice about <em>them</em>.</p>
<p>It wasn’t until they got off the bus in Cetinje, a green and picturesque city among rolling hills at the edge of Lovcen National Park, that anyone really said anything.  Even then, it seemed as if Sir Stephen only spoke because he couldn’t take the silence anymore.  Maybe it had taken the entire bus ride for him to come up with something to say.</p>
<p>“Buckeye did enjoy the company of women,” he remarked.</p>
<p>“Yeah?” asked Jim.</p>
<p>“Oh, yes,” Sir Stephen agreed.  “Everywhere he went, there were broken hearts in his wake.  He would often try to find a lady to keep me company, as well, but to no avail.  In my youth I was not the sort they admired.”</p>
<p>“Well, that was their loss,” Sam observed.</p>
<p>“None can see the future,” said Sir Stephen.  He wasn’t bitter about it – Natasha remembered his story of how Lady Margaret had admired his bravery, even before the Lady of the Lake had turned him into a warrior.  “Buckeye had hoped to marry someday,” he went on.  “He would need a wife to carry on his father’s line, as he was the only son who lived to adulthood.”</p>
<p>“That didn’t happen,” Jim said, unnecessarily.</p>
<p>“No, it did not.  So in a way, I suppose he might be glad to think he would be resurrected in some form, to give his lineage a second chance,” Sir Stephen said.</p>
<p>“Well, I don’t think I’ll be doing <em>that</em> for him,” Jim said quickly.  “Perenelle did say I don’t have any human DNA.”</p>
<p>“And I couldn’t do my bit even if he could do his,” Nat added.  The people who’d raised her in the Red Room had taken care of that.</p>
<p>“I didn’t mean that,” said Sir Stephen.  “I only think he would be glad to know you exist at all, and gladder still that you and I have met.”</p>
<p>“This may come as a surprise,” Jim said, “but I actually don’t care what Sir James Buckeye would have thought of me.”  And with that, it seemed, the ill-conceived attempt at conversation was finally, mercifully over.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Next Stop</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Unfortunately, the peace didn’t last long.  The spite in Jim’s voice – a lot more than Nat would have expected, and probably more than he’d intended – had shocked everybody into silence, but it was the sort of silence that quickly began to feel oppressive, as if <em>somebody</em> needed to break it with words.  Even Natasha herself had to concentrate to resist the urge to say something inane.  Talking about the weather, or the birds warily watching the falcon on Sam’s shoulder, would have made things way worse.</p>
<p>When she turned to look at Jim, she found him sullenly watching the sidewalk at his feet while Sir Stephen, behind him, waited for him to raise his head so he could catch his eye.  Jim refused to do so.</p>
<p>“Stop looking at me like that,” he said finally.</p>
<p>“You cannot see me,” Sir Stephen pointed out.  “You don’t know how I’m looking at you.”</p>
<p>“Yes, I do,” said Jim, “because it’s the same way you’ve been looking at me every time you were leading up to saying <em>Buckeye would have done this</em> or <em>Buckeye would have said that</em>.”  He finally looked up, and glared at Sir Stephen.  “See?  There it is!  I knew it!”</p>
<p>“It is only that you surprise me sometimes,” Sir Stephen said.</p>
<p>“Because I’m not your old buddy,” Jim nodded, “and you’re disappointed, every time!”</p>
<p>“Well, Sir Steve,” Natasha said, slightly louder than necessary, “now you know what it was like for Allen and for Mrs. Francis.”</p>
<p>She’d chosen her moment well – Sir Stephen and Jim had been about to start arguing, but Nat’s statement stopped them short.  In Sir Stephen’s case, this was literally, and Sharon had to urge him back into motion before she walked right into him.  Nat turned to face backwards as they continued up the Jovana Tomaševića.</p>
<p>“When Allen met me,” she reminded everyone, “he said I looked like his daughter but didn’t act like her.  Same with Mrs. Francis talking to Clint when he thought he was Robin Hood.  The other person <em>looks</em> like somebody you know but they <em>aren’t</em>, and if Allen and Laura could cope with that, so can you.”</p>
<p>Sir Stephen clearly hadn’t thought of it that way.  He swallowed, embarrassed.  “This is different,” he tried.</p>
<p>“It really isn’t,” said Nat.</p>
<p>“I don’t think it is,” Allen put in.</p>
<p>“Thanks, Dad,” Nat nodded to him.  He was probably obligated to agree with her, but she didn’t care as long as <em>somebody</em> took her side.</p>
<p>“I wouldn’t know,” Jim said, “since I don’t actually know anybody.”</p>
<p>They turned a corner, and there, as Google maps had promised, was the French Embassy in Montenegro.  It was located in an aging, tile-walled house, across the street from a stone wall and a row of trees that provided privacy for the people living in the neighbouring suburb.  They climbed the steps and let themselves in, and Natasha explained to the man at the desk why they were there.  He invited them to sit down in the little waiting room, and promised that a passport official would see them shortly.</p>
<p>Allen sat next to Nat, and while the others pretended to read the French and Montenegrin magazines on the tables, he leaned over and asked softly, “you can’t have children?”</p>
<p>Nat shut her eyes for a moment.  “What is it, Awkward Conversation Day?”</p>
<p>“Sorry,” he said quickly.  “It’s none of my business, it’s just you said you couldn’t, uh, do your part with…”  His voice trailed off as he realized he was making it worse.</p>
<p>She sighed.  “No.  I can’t.  None of us can.”</p>
<p>“There were more of you?” Allen asked.</p>
<p>Hadn’t she told him that?  Apparently not.  “Yeah.  I was one of twenty-eight to begin with.  We got whittled down to ten by the time we were teenagers.”</p>
<p>“Oh.”  Allen nodded, frowning.  “Well… you can adopt.”</p>
<p>The words were meant kindly, but Nat rankled.  “You do realize I’m not here to be the vessel by which you have grandchildren, right?”</p>
<p>“I didn’t mean that,” he said quickly.</p>
<p>“Then what <em>did</em> you mean?” Nat asked.  Her voice had risen above a whisper now, and while she dropped it again as soon as she realized that, the others were watching now.  “This is the twenty-first century.  Usually I only have to remind Sir Steve of that, but now apparently you too!”</p>
<p>“I didn’t mean it that way, Ginger Snap!” he repeated.</p>
<p>“Then you should have kept your mouth shut!”</p>
<p>Natasha was far too good at reading people, and so she knew right away that hadn’t been fair to Allen.  He’d <em>meant</em> to comfort her, because he assumed her infertility upset her… and if she were being honest, it <em>did</em> upset her when she thought about it.  That was why she usually didn’t.  Motherhood was only one of the possible futures the Red Room had taken from her, but it was one that particularly stung.  Perhaps that was because it meant that she, like Jim and like Sir James Buckeye, would leave no legacy.  She was the product of four billion years of organisms reproducing, but now this particular genetic line had come to a dead end.</p>
<p>Still, he shouldn’t have <em>assumed</em>.</p>
<p>“Doctor Jones?” a voice called.  She looked up, and found a woman in a dark gray skirt suit standing in the doorway, looking at the waiting group.  That must be the passport official.</p>
<p>Nat plastered a smile on her face and stood up.  “<em>Bonjour</em>,” she said, and held up the document.  “<em>J’ai ici le passeport de Madame Desrosiers</em>.”</p>
<p>She followed the official back to her office, where she spun a story about how she’d gone to Athens to meet an old friend from a history conference, but Helene had been called away by a family emergency and left her passport behind.  While the official was distracted by a series of excuses about why she hadn’t turned the passport in before leaving Greece, Nat slipped a USB drive into the woman’s laptop, uploading a program that would copy recently edited files and email them to Sharon.  She retrieved the drive before shaking the official’s hand, and everybody trooped back outside.</p>
<p>Sharon was waiting with a smile on her face.  “A woman calling herself Helene Desrosiers checked into a hotel in Messina on the island of Sicily, using a French passport as her ID,” she said.</p>
<p>“That’s our next stop, then,” said Nat, relieved to be talking business again.  “Text your wife, Clint – time to get a head start on that shopping list.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>Another tourist bus took them back to Tivat, where they got on a flight to Messina.  Natasha did think about going first class, just so they could bill it to the British government, but the flight was so short it didn’t seem worth it, so they went coach.  Nat, sitting next to Allen, was quiet for most of it, but she did have something to say.  It just took her an hour or so to work herself up to saying it, because it wasn’t something she said very often.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry,” she said.  “I know you didn’t mean it that way.”</p>
<p>“I know,” Allen replied.  “You’re an adult, and your decisions are none of my business.  I’m sorry, too, I was gossiping.  When they got started, I should have shut them down and I didn’t.”</p>
<p>Nat was relieved he was smart enough to realize what she was <em>really</em> upset about.  “Oh?” she asked.</p>
<p>“I was the last one to the breakfast table before you guys,” Allen explained apologetically, “and when I got there they were sort of looking sideways at me, like they were wondering if I’d noticed.  I had, of course, so I told them about the first one, Barnes, flirting with you on the train, and then we got into this weird discussion about whether somebody like Jim could have children.  Then you two suddenly arrived, and we worried you’d heard some of it.”  He began twisting his empty airplane pretzel bag in his hands.  “I think Sam’s a little jealous.  I think he likes you, himself.”</p>
<p>That put the awkwardness – and Sam’s comments – in a very different light, and Nat felt ashamed to have judged everybody so harshly.  They weren’t perfect angels, of course, they were human beings who said things they shouldn’t say, but they didn’t consider Jim less than human.  The question was, when had <em>she</em> gotten so invested in it that she’d become defensive?</p>
<p>“I’m sorry,” he repeated.  “Next time I’ll tell them it’s not appropriate.”</p>
<p>“What, next time you find me in bed with a guy I just met last week?” Nat asked with a raised eyebrow.</p>
<p>Allen turned red.  “Is that something that happens often?” he asked, horrified.  A few moments of emotional turmoil played out on his face, and then he added, “it’s up to you, of course, I mean, you need to do what makes you happy…”</p>
<p>After a moment of indecision, Nat let herself giggle.  “As a matter of fact, it doesn’t, but it’s nice to know you support my ambitions no matter what they might be.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>Brief as the flight to Sicily was, they almost didn’t make it.  Like Santorini, the island of Sicily had been created by a volcano, and that volcano was not a quiet one.  Mount Etna was among the largest and most active such places in Europe, and it had been smoking gently for a few weeks now.  The past twenty-four hours had been particularly bad, to the point where air traffic had to be detoured to avoid potentially clogging the engines with ash.  The CAAP’s flight had to wait in a holding pattern for nearly two hours before they were finally cleared to land at Messina.</p>
<p>The volcano was fifty kilometres from the city, but the looming column of smoke was still clearly visible as they left the airport.  It meandered up for a long way, before veering sharply off to the east as the high-altitude winds caught it.  In a photograph it would have been rather beautiful, but being so close to it was ominous.  The group was chasing a mad alchemist, and here they were, on top of one of the biggest furnaces imagineable.</p>
<p>“That looks bad,” Clint remarked, watching the smoke column nervously as they crossed the airport parking lot.  “Are we sure it’s safe to be here?”</p>
<p>“It’s not close,” said Sharon.  “If it really erupts, all they’ll get in Messina will be an earthquake.”</p>
<p>“Uh-huh,” Clint said.  “You know what?  That’s not reassuring.”  His phone beeped, and he dug it out of his pocket for a look.</p>
<p>“Now what?” asked Jim.</p>
<p>“Pistachios,” said Clint.  “Sounds like Sicily is famous for them.”</p>
<p>Messina was quite a modern town compared to the places they’d stopped so far.  The old city had been mostly destroyed in World War II, so almost every building was less than seventy years old.  Where Tivat and Kotor had been dark stone and narrow cobbled lanes, Messina was clean new buildings painted pastel colours, on either side of broad paved streets lined with orange trees.  Across the strait, beyond the pillar of Saint Mary, it was possible to see the tip of Calabria.</p>
<p>The information Nat had stolen from the passport official’s computer included the address of the hotel Desrosiers was staying at – the Europa Palace, located in a blocky yellow and green building set well back from the street behind a line of palm trees.  From the outside it looked more like an apartment block than anything a person might compare to a palace, but the lobby turned out to be quite nice, with marble floors, burgundy leather armchairs, and sparkling chandeliers.  Nat passed before approaching the desk, and looked at Sharon.</p>
<p>“You or me?” she asked.</p>
<p>“Better be you,” said Sharon.  “We’re not here to arrest her.”</p>
<p>Nat therefore went up and rang the bell.  The woman who came out of the back office to answer was middle aged, with darkly-tanned skin and bleach-blonde hair.</p>
<p>“<em>Buongiorno</em>,” she said with a friendly smile.  “<em>Come posso aiutarti oggi</em>?”</p>
<p>“<em>Buongiorno</em>,” Nat replied.  “<em>We’re here to meet a friend, Senora Helene Desrosiers.  She told us she would be staying here</em>.”</p>
<p>“<em>The East Asian lady</em>?” asked the clerk.  “<em>You’ve already missed her, I’m afraid.  She went on to Taormina this morning.  She had me call ahead and confirm her reservation there.</em>”</p>
<p>“<em>That’s a shame</em>,” said Nat.  “<em>Can you tell us where she’s staying there</em>?”</p>
<p>“<em>I’m afraid not.  It would be a breach of privacy</em>,” the clerk said.</p>
<p>Nat wouldn’t press her, then – she had other ways of getting information.  “<em>Of course</em>,” she said.  “<em>I shouldn’t have asked.  One more thing: is the hotel’s restaurant open to non-guests?  My friends and I have been on the plane for hours because of the eruption, and we’re all starving</em>.”</p>
<p>“<em>Certainly</em>,” said the clerk.  “<em>Please, go ahead</em>.”</p>
<p>“<em>Grazie</em>,” said Natasha, and the others echoed – this being the only word in Italian most of them knew.  “<em>Is there somewhere we can keep our luggage?</em>”</p>
<p>“<em>We have some lockers</em>,” the clerk said.  “<em>Let me just speak to the manager</em>.”</p>
<p>Once the clerk had approval, she and a bellboy took the luggage to put safely away, while an usher showed the group to the restaurant.  That left the desk unoccupied.  Jim stood guard, while Nat went through the last few numbers in the desk phone’s memory.  The hotel had called a laundry service and two taxi companies, the airport… and a number that was answered by a man who said, “Hotel Isabella, Taormina.”</p>
<p>Nat wrote down the name and hung up.</p>
<p>“Got it?” asked Jim.</p>
<p>“Got it,” Nat agreed, pulling a page off the notepad to luck into her pocket.</p>
<p>The clerk reappeared in the doorway, and looked surprised to still find them there.  “<em>Was</em><em> there something else you needed</em>?” she asked, surprised to still find them there.</p>
<p>“<em>Only a pen</em>,” Nat replied, slipping it back into the cup.</p>
<p>The building looked a little shabby from the outside, but the Europa Palace Hotel had four and a half stars and the dining bore that out.  The locally-made bread was particularly lovely, and upon learning that one of the dishes had nuts in it, Clint called the waiter over to ask about the best places to get pistachios.</p>
<p>“So what’s Taormina?” asked Jim.</p>
<p>Sam was flipping through an English-language tourist brochure he’d taken from the front desk.  “Says here it’s been a resort town since Roman times and is well-known as for its high-end shopping,” he said.  “It’s also pretty close to the volcano.”</p>
<p>Clint looked up from scribbling down addresses of nut vendors.  “Wait, we’re going <em>closer</em> to the volcano?” he asked.  “We want to live through this, don’t we?  What was the point of letting her heal me with that goop if we don’t?”</p>
<p>“If she’s in Taormina, then yeah, we gotta get quite a bit closer,” said Nat, mentally arranging her map of Sicily.</p>
<p>“That might be the point,” said Jim.</p>
<p>“You think so?” Nat looked at him.</p>
<p>“Well, I doubt she’s looking for Swarovski crystal or designer shoes,” Sam observed.</p>
<p>“Is there a reason you say that?” Nat asked Jim.  “Or is it just an intuition?”</p>
<p>He shrugged.  “It feels right,” he said.  The same way he’d known that Newton’s notebooks were in Greek, or where to find the man himself in Athens.  “Maybe it’s because alchemists are associated with fire.”</p>
<p>Natasha had already observed that a volcano was a giant furnace.  “When we catch up with her, we’ll ask her,” she decided.</p>
<p>“Are we gonna be able to get there?” asked Clint.  “There might not be any buses or anything.  If the volcano is active, people are probably trying to get <em>away</em> from it.”</p>
<p>“If anything there’ll be <em>more</em> buses than usual,” Nat told him.  “Tourists come from all over to see Mount Etna.  To see it <em>erupting</em> we’ll be lucky to get seats.”</p>
<p>Clint shook his head.  “Amazing,” he said.  “I know I’m no genius, but even <em>I</em> know that you don’t sit next to a volcano!”</p>
<p>“If people knew not to sit next to a volcano, Pompeii wouldn’t get millions of visitors every year,” said Sharon.</p>
<p>“What is Pompeii?” asked Sir Stephen.</p>
<p>“It’s a Roman city that was buried in a volcanic eruption,” Sharon explained.</p>
<p>“It’s in Italy, at the foot of Mount Vesuvius,” Nat added.  “When they dug it out of the ash they found that things like the wall paintings and the layouts of the gardens were perfectly preserved.”</p>
<p>She hadn’t known how Sir Stephen might react to the idea of Pompeii.  He was usually not a fan of digging up the dead, but in this instance, he was enthralled.  The people of his time had considered the Roman Empire a sort of lost, semi-mythical golden age.  The idea of an intact city of that era, one where you could walk down the streets and get a feel for how the houses were decorated, both fascinated and horrified him.  Natasha spent the rest of their meal telling him about it, and he hung on her every word.</p>
<p>“At the rate we’re going, that’ll be the next stop on our Mediterranean’s Greatest Hits Tour,” said Clint.  “There were cruise ships at the docks… was our friend there?”</p>
<p>He was referring to the <em>Scorpio II</em> they’d seen in Santorini and at Kotor.  “I didn’t see it,” Nat said.  Of course, she hadn’t looked.</p>
<p>“Well, at least we’re not being stalked by the idle rich,” said Clint.</p>
<p>Nat had been right about the buses.  Even though it was late afternoon by the time they finished their brunch and got underway again, all the regular routes scheduled for Taormina were full, and the Sicilians had been obliged to add extras.  Rather than cram themselves in with the tourists, this time the CAAP decided to rent a van.  The woman at the rental agency commented that it was a good thing they needed a large vehicle.  Other people who’d failed to get bus tickets had already taken the smaller ones.</p>
<p>“I’ve been thinking,” Sharon announced, as they threw their luggage in the back and piled in, “when we get back we should probably give Fury and the Queen a list of things we’re going to need on future investigations.  I’m thinking number one will be staff vehicles.”</p>
<p>“You’re assuming we haven’t already used up our annual budget,” said Clint.  “I don’t know how much money we have, but I doubt it’s very much.”</p>
<p>“Then that’s the first thing we should ask,” Sharon replied reasonably.  “Once we know what our budget <em>is</em>, we can figure out how to allocate it.  We probably should have asked before we got on the train with the mummy.”</p>
<p>“You guys aren’t very <em>good</em> at this secret government department thing, are you?” asked Jim.</p>
<p>“They’re new at it,” Nat told him.</p>
<p>They were moments from the turnoff to the costal highway when Sam, who was driving, suddenly stamped on the brake hard enough that both Allen and Jim yelped in surprise.  Sam did not apologize.  He pulled over, threw the door open, and climbed out of the van with the engine still running.</p>
<p>“That way!” he pointed down a side street.</p>
<p>“What’s that way?” asked Nat, already undoing her seat belt.</p>
<p>“Neustadt!” said Sam.  “Newton!  I saw him, I’m sure of it!”</p>
<p>He took off up the street, with Natasha right behind him and Jim directly behind <em>her</em>.  “Sam!” Nat shouted.  “What was he <em>wearing</em>?”</p>
<p>“Light blue t-shirt with a Greek temple on it!” Sam shouted back.  “And that filthy hat!”</p>
<p>They reached the next intersection.  Roads went off in three directions, all of them choked with traffic both vehicle and foot, almost all of it on the way out of Messina towards Mount Etna.  At the time he was born, Sir Isaac Newton had been of average height, but in the twenty-first century he was quite short and could easily vanish into a crowd.  Nat, who was short, herself, couldn’t see any sign of him.</p>
<p>“Split up,” Sam ordered.</p>
<p>Nat went straight ahead, Sam left, and Jim right.  The others, bringing up the rear, also divided – Sharon and Sir Stephen went with Jim, Clint with Sam, and Allen with Natasha.  Nat and her father followed the road almost all the way to the Piazza del Popolo, but saw no sign of Newton.  Each asked several people, Allen in English and Nat in Italian, if they’d seen a small white-haired man in a beat-up hat and a tourist’s shirt, but it seemed nobody had taken note of him.  If the man Sam had seen had indeed been Newton, he’d slipped through their fingers.</p>
<p>Eventually they had to give up.  Nat and Allen trudged back to the van to find that Sam and Clint were already there, looking morose.  The rest of the party didn’t show up for several more minutes, until Sam finally rang Sharon’s mobile to ask if they’d found anything.  She replied that they’d followed a man in a blue t-shirt for several blocks before the crowds allowed them to catch up with him, only to have him turn out to be somebody else.</p>
<p>The group was in low spirits as they climbed back into their rented vehicle, enough so that Allen apparently felt the need to cheer everybody up.  “Look at it this way,” he suggested.  “If Newton is in Sicily, we must be on the right track.”</p>
<p>“Either that, or we’re all so worked up we’re seeing things,” grumbled Sam.</p>
<p>“We <em>know</em> Desrosiers is here, or at least that she <em>was</em> here, not long ago,” Nat reminded everyone.  “If Newton’s here too, she’ll know about it.”  Something important must be happening in Taormina, or maybe Jim was right and there was something important about the volcano itself.  <em>Could</em> a volcanic crater be used as an alchemical furnace?  Even if it could… why would anyone do that in the modern world, when even greater heat could be generated in a laboratory with far less risk to life, limb, and nearby buildings?  Or was there something else going on entirely?</p>
<p>They set off again, heading south.  Like European towns of any size, no matter how recently built, Messina did not sprawl.  Soon they were out of the city and into the rugged countryside beyond.  Volcanic Sicily was a hilly place, all sheer cliffs and dry riverbeds, with vegetation that ranged from colourful oleanders and bougainvillea to gray olive trees, tall palms with their curtains of dead leaves hanging below the crown of green ones, and even prickle pear cactus, brought back from the Americas by sailors long ago.  The road snaked along the coast rather treacherously in places, with the slopes soaring away on their right and arches supporting the pavement high above towns and beaches on their left.</p>
<p>“So,” Jim said, as the countryside rolled by.  “I probably should have asked this earlier, and maybe it’s a stupid question anyway, but… what is it you people actually <em>do</em>?”</p>
<p>Nat blinked, then glanced at Sam, who was sitting next to her in the driver’s seat.  He shrugged, and his shoulders shook a little as he laughed quietly.  She smiled back – even <em>they</em> weren’t quite sure what they did.  They’d certainly gone far beyond their initial assignment on this trip.  “I guess we appraise archaeological peril,” she said.  “If something’s old and looks like it’s weird and magical, I guess it’s our job to keep an eye on it and figure out what to do if it starts causing trouble.  We got involved in <em>this</em> when we were told to transport a cursed mummy.”</p>
<p>“That’s right!” Sam exclaimed, and chuckled aloud this time.  “I completely forgot about the damn mummy.  I wonder what they’re doing with it.”</p>
<p>“There was an article about that in one of the newspapers in the office in Cetinje,” Sharon said.  “Conservators in Paris have been gluing the sarcophagus back together under the supervision of Egyptian specialists.  It didn’t say what happened to the mummy itself.  I expect it was beyond saving.”</p>
<p>“That is better for her than being gawked at by travelers in a museum,” said Sir Stephen.</p>
<p>“What about pilgrimages?” Nat asked him again.  “Not all of them were about holy <em>places</em>, sometimes a church would advertise that it had the relics of a saint.  How is visiting Egypt to see a mummy any different than that?”</p>
<p>“For one thing, you seek no benefit to your soul,” Sir Stephen said.</p>
<p>“That’s not true,” said Sharon.  “I’ve always thought traveling was very good for the soul, so to speak.  You get to relax a bit, you have a change of scenery, meet some people and try some new things.  As long as you’re getting out of your hotel or off your boat once in a while to mingle with the locals, it’s a learning experience.”</p>
<p>Natasha was glad she added that caveat.  When people traveled by cruise ship, like the <em>Scorpio II</em> they kept seeing, some of them probably spent the whole trip in the casino with a drink in one hand and a slot machine lever in the other.</p>
<p>“And if we can save the world <em>while</em> we travel, so much the better?” asked Clint.</p>
<p>“That’s not travel, that’s <em>work</em>!” Sharon snorted.  “If this is a vacation, then when it’s over I’m going to need another one to recover from it.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Taormina</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sir Stephen was not a man who knew when to let something go, so Nat was annoyed but not particularly surprised when, as they rumbled along the road to Taormina, he resumed their argument as if it had never left off.</p>
<p>“For another thing,” he said, “the people and places you go to see did not ask to be objects of wonder.  Your Princess Sitamun, from what I have read of the Egyptians, hoped to have her funerary temple tended while her body and sarcophagus rested undisturbed!  Or what of the people on the island of Santorini?  They do nothing but serve the needs of visitors!  They have no industries of their own.  I heard a woman tell her tour group that even <em>water</em> must be brought in, for there is none native to the island.”</p>
<p>“How is that <em>any</em> different from medieval Santiago de Compostela?” Nat asked.  “Tourism was basically all <em>they</em> did.”</p>
<p>“They were doing God’s work,” Sir Stephen said.  “The relics of Saint James were meant to be seen, so they could perform their miracles.  Saint James himself, were he able to watch, would be pleased.  Could you say the same thing of the Egyptians?”</p>
<p>“Steve,” said Sharon gently.  “You’re just going over the same stuff over and over.  You guys are gonna have to agree to disagree.”</p>
<p>“What qualifies <em>you</em> to speak for the ancient Egyptians, anyway?” Jim spoke up.  “You’re not an Egyptian – you’re a medieval knight.  You only know what <em>you</em> think they wanted.”</p>
<p>“I think I have a better understanding of the peoples of old than any of you,” said Sir Stephen, in a voice that rejected the entire twenty-first century.</p>
<p>“Princess Sitamun lived nearly three thousand years ago,” said Natasha.  “<em>You</em> were born in the first half of the eleventh century AD.  You’re twice as distant in time from the Egyptians as you are from us.”</p>
<p>“Even if you weren’t,” said Sharon, “thousands of years is such a long time, I don’t think it matters.  None of us know what the ancient Egyptians would have thought of us.”</p>
<p>“Then none of us should presume to speak for them,” said Sir Stephen.</p>
<p>“I don’t think the Egyptians <em>care</em>,” Clint spoke up.  “I mean… if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that they’re dead.”</p>
<p>Mount Etna itself had not been visible from Messina, only its towering column of smoke.  As they got closer, with dusk closing in, the volcanic peak emerged from the foothills.  It was taller than any of them, with its top wreathed in mist lit eerily red from within.  The village of Taormina below it was a tiny place among a dozen similar-looking tourist towns perched on the cliffs above the beaches.  It lined both sides of a single meandering medieval street behind a city wall, with apartments on the upper floors of the buildings and shops and restaurants on the ground.  In the twilight the streetlamps were lit, and shops were still open selling everything from cheesy souvenir magnets and keychains to expensive designer jewelry, beach gear to hand-made marionettes and everything in between.</p>
<p>With the volcano currently putting on such a show, the population of the little town had swollen to capacity and beyond.  Not only was the main street full of shoppers, diners, and people enjoying various entertainments, even the roofs and balconies were crowded with people, many of them looking through binoculars for a better view.  The whole place felt like it was having a party – but there was also an undercurrent of something much more ominous.  As well as the tourists there were people with vehicles full of their possessions brought down from higher on the mountainside, and signs directed them to ferries that could take them to the mainland.</p>
<p>Sam found them a parking spot at the outskirts of a lot just outside the town, and the six members of the CAAP, plus Jim, made their way through the crowds of tourists, locals, and intermittent stray dogs to find the Hotel Isabella.  Like the Europa Palace in Messina, it had four stars, but the Hotel Isabella was decidedly unprepossessing from the outside.  Its façade was a narrow stone building with an arched door, wedged in between a place selling football merchandise and another offering colourful leather handbags.  Inside, the lobby was beautiful decorated but very tiny, with far too many tables and chairs crammed into the small space.  Nat made her way to the front desk, and asked if a Mrs. Desrosiers were there.</p>
<p>“<em>You missed her</em>,” the clerk replied in Italian.  He was a balding man, his skin dark and wizened from a lifetime in the sun.  Nat nodded, having pretty much expected it by this time – but then, to her surprise, the man kept talking.  “<em>Only by about ten or fifteen minutes, though.  She met a friend and they went out for supper.  I don’t know when they’ll be back, but we have a bar if you’d like to wait for her.</em>”</p>
<p>Nat perked up.  “<em>What friend</em>?” she asked.  He couldn’t possibly mean Newton, could he?  Every indication had been that the two alchemists hated each other.  But if it <em>wasn’t</em> Newton, that suggested a third person involved in the feud and that was the last thing they needed.  “<em>Was it a German, with long white hair and a very ugly hat?</em>”</p>
<p>“<em>It was an older man</em>,” the clerk said, “<em>but I didn’t hear his voice enough to know if he were German.  I think they spoke English</em>.”</p>
<p>Newton was far from being history’s only famous alchemist.  Desrosiers had said her husband was dead, but history and legend were full of characters like Paracelsus or Agricola who’d messed around with chemistry and performed magic.  If alchemy were a real thing, they might still be around causing trouble.  That was an unpleasant thought, and it was mainly because of that Nat decided to believe Desrosiers’ ‘friend’ was Newton until she saw evidence to the contrary.  Maybe they just hadn’t wanted to make a scene in front of people.  She thanked the man, and went back outside to deliver the news to her colleagues.</p>
<p>“We’re gonna have to split up and search again,” she told them.  “If we’re only a few minutes behind her, we can’t lose the opportunity.”</p>
<p>“What about here?” asked Allen.  “Shouldn’t somebody say here unless she comes back?”</p>
<p>Nat nodded.  “You can do that,” she said.  “The rest of us will search the nearby restaurants.”  Dining establishments in Kotor and Santorini had spilled out onto the roads, but most of the ones in Taormina seemed to be indoors.  The narrow main street just didn’t have room.  That would slow them down considerably.</p>
<p>Sharon and Sir Stephen set off together, as did Sam and Clint, who seemed to have bonded in mutual mistrust of Jim.  That left only Jim himself to go with Natasha – and <em>that</em>, she realized, meant they were going to have to talk about their sexual dalliance and what the rest of the group thought about it.  Nat would definitely pass on what Allen had told her, but she wondered if Jim would believe her.  Would he think she was just sparing his feelings?</p>
<p>Sure enough, once they were away from the others, Jim brought it up almost immediately.  “I think I need to apologize,” he said.  “I didn’t realize they were gonna be so…”  He swallowed.  “It was selfish of me to ask, and…”</p>
<p>“Don’t,” said Nat.  “I can’t take any more apologies.  You asked my permission, I gave it to you, we both enjoyed it, and they don’t care as much as it looked like.  I talked to Dad about it.”</p>
<p>It seemed he <em>did</em> believe the explanation, because he looked relieved when she told him.  “That’s… still really awkward,” Jim admitted, “but I wouldn’t want your friends to think less of you.”</p>
<p>“Oh, they wouldn’t,” said Nat.  “I won’t let them.”</p>
<p>Jim had to smile a little at that.  “I believe you.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Natasha had realized that the two of them were clearly marching down the street with a purpose – they were not blending in.  She took Jim’s hand.  “We look too much like we’re on a mission,” she said.  “Slow down, and put an arm around me.”</p>
<p>Jim laughed.</p>
<p>“Seriously.”  She gave him a poke.</p>
<p>“Just for appearances, huh?” asked Jim.  He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her in until their hips touched.  “Wouldn’t want to stand out.”</p>
<p>Natasha smiled to herself.  She could have kept her face straight, but right now a happy expression could be part of the act, and she rarely got to enjoy this kind of closeness.  Allen hugged her, but he <em>had</em> to love her because he was, in whatever sense the word was meaningful, her father.  It was probably possible to argue that Jim didn’t have much choice, either.  He had no friends or family of his own, so if he wanted human contact, his options were very limited.</p>
<p>Yet at the same time… this was nice.  Maybe the honesty had something to do with it.  As Natasha had noted earlier, she rarely got to be honest with people.  Allen wanted her to be honest no matter how terrible the truth was, but she couldn’t bring herself to do so, because she didn’t want to hurt him with her answers.  Now here she was, and here was Jim, and both of them were just being whatever they were.  If either of them had wanted to get close to anybody else, they would have had to lie about it, but not with each other.</p>
<p>Nat’s phone buzzed.  She stopped and pulled it out, and found a text message from Sharon.</p>
<p><em>We’ve found Desrosiers</em>, it said.  <em>She’s alone at the sushi place above the bus parking</em>.</p>
<p><em>On our way</em>, Nat texted back.  She ut her phone back in her pocket and turned to Jim.  “Looks like we have to turn around.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, I saw,” he said.  “Does that mean we stop blending in?”</p>
<p>“Of course not,” Nat said, and patted his hand on her hip.</p>
<p>Just outside the city gate, next to the self-consciously spectacular Excelsior Palace Hotel, was a very tiny mobile midway consisting of only one carousel and a bouncy castle in a car park.  Just beyond those was a petrol station with a row of bank machines and a couple of elevators to go down to the parking garage below, and beside <em>that</em> was a small restaurant serving sushi and antipasto on a little patio overhanging the cliffs above the bay.  The view was spectacular, but the only thing that interested Nat was that Madame Desrosiers was sitting there at the nearest table, as if waiting for someone.  She was wearing a flowing gray dress and high heels, with a tortoiseshell comb in her hair, and sipping a glass of water while staring out across the water at the lights on the Calabrian coast.</p>
<p>Sir Stephen and Sharon were standing there waiting.  Nat and Jim joined them, and a moment later Clint and Sam did the same.  If Desrosiers noticed them, she didn’t show it – she kept her back to them, and glanced at her watch.  Nat wondered why she was facing the water.  If she were waiting for somebody, shouldn’t she be watching the car park so she could see them coming?</p>
<p>A minute or so dragged by, and Nat decided Desrosiers must be waiting for them to make the first move.  She walked towards Desrosiers’ table, and the woman finally seemed to realize she was there and turned around to look.</p>
<p>“Oh,” said Desrosiers.  “It’s you again.”</p>
<p>“Spoken like a woman who <em>hasn’t</em> been sitting here for half an hour waiting for us,” Nat observed.</p>
<p>Desrosiers shrugged.  “Very well, sit down,” she said.  “I was worried I’d made it too difficult for you to find me, but I thought if it were too easy you’d get suspicious.”</p>
<p>“You’re right,” Nat said.  “Right now I’m <em>extremely</em> suspicious.”</p>
<p>They arranged themselves around her.  Natasha, Jim, and Sir Stephen took the remaining chairs at Madame Desrosiers’ table, while the other four sat at the next one.  Nat did notice that although her back was to the car park, Desrosiers was also right at the edge of the restaurant area… was that because she wanted to be noticed, or so that she could easily escape?</p>
<p>The first person she spoke to was Jim.  “How are you feeling?” Desrosiers asked him.</p>
<p>“Fine so far,” he replied.  “I’d like to stay that way.”</p>
<p>Desrosiers shook her head.  “There’s not much to be done for that.  You can only continue to exist by being regularly replenished – and even then, you won’t change the way a human being would.  You won’t get older, your hair won’t grow…” she gestured to him with one hand.  “You will look the way you do now for however long you last.”</p>
<p>Jim looked crushed.  “Why didn’t you tell me that before?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Because I wasn’t sure it was true.  I needed to look up Paracelsus’ notes,” she explained.  “It would only have upset you anyway, and you were already upset.”</p>
<p>Jim’s shoulders sagged.  He must feel like yet another bit of humanity had been snatched away, and Natasha felt sorry for him – but they had to stick to the point and learn as much as they could before Desrosiers ran off again.</p>
<p>“Why did you want to meet us?” Nat asked.  “Was it to give Jim more doses?”  If that were it, she would be… delighted on one level, deeply disappointed on another.</p>
<p>“No.  I don’t have any more elixir to spare on short notice,” Desrosiers said.  “I’m here to ask a favour.  You have Neustadt’s notebooks.  That’s why you went to Santorini, isn’t it?  I need them.”</p>
<p>The notebooks were still in the inside pockets of Nat’s jacket.  It was really far too warm to be wearing the jacket in Sicily, even with the sun going down, but she wasn’t going to take it off as long as she had such valuable cargo inside it.  It was all Nat could do not to reach in and check if they were still there, but she didn’t dare.  Desrosiers was smart enough to notice.</p>
<p>“What do you want them for?” Nat asked evenly.</p>
<p>“I need to figure out what he’s likely to do next,” Desrosiers replied.  “The books are useless to you – they’ll be written in an alchemist’s code that might take you years to break.  I can translate them properly and make use of them.”</p>
<p>Nat wondered what Desrosiers would think if told that, with the help of Jim’s intuitions, they’d already decoded quite a bit.  “You already know how to make the philosopher’s stone,” she pointed out.</p>
<p>“But I don’t know how much <em>he</em> knows about it,” said Desrosiers.</p>
<p>“The notebooks are three hundred years old,” Nat countered.  “He’ll definitely have learned more since then.”</p>
<p>“They’ll give me somewhere to start from.”</p>
<p>Natasha sat still for a moment, studying Desrosiers’ face as she tried to figure out what this woman’s new game was.  Something was obviously up.  In Guedelon and then in Athens, Helene Desrosiers had wanted nothing to do with them.  Now she’d lured them in so subtly that they’d actually fallen for it.  What did she <em>really</em> want?  “I’ll tell you what,” said Nat.  “We’ll share the translations <em>we’ve</em> been working on, and in return you tell us what <em>you</em> know – and we hang on to the notebooks.”</p>
<p>“<em>You’ve</em>…” Desrosiers frowned, then shook her head.  “Not all the subtleties are encoded in the words.  I need to see the pages.”</p>
<p>“Is Newton on Sicily?” Nat asked.  “If so, why?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” said Desrosiers, so quickly that Nat would have known it was a lie even if Sam hadn’t spotted the man in Messina earlier.  “He might be here for the volcano.  The Philosopher’s Stone requires enormous energies to get it started.</p>
<p>“So you build it inside a volcano?” asked Clint.</p>
<p>“Of course not!” Desrosiers huffed.  “That would be foolish.  He’ll have a way to drain and store the energy of the volcano to use elsewhere.  The heat of Vulcan’s own forge is supposed to be particularly good for alchemy.”  She took a sip of her water, as if to calm herself.  “That’s not important right now, though.  I need the books.  I need to see each page, in order.”</p>
<p>“We’ll photograph them for you, then,” Nat suggested.  “And you can send <em>us</em> pictures of the pages from the one you already stole.”</p>
<p>“I didn’t steal it,” Desrosiers protested.</p>
<p><em>I didn’t steal it</em> was a particularly versatile sentence, Natasha noted.  It could mean four very different things, depending on where the emphasis was placed.  <em>I didn’t steal</em> <em><span class="u">it</span></em> was the statement of somebody who had stolen something else.  <em>I didn’t <span class="u">steal</span> it</em> meant the speaker believed she was the rightful owner of the object in question.  And <em>I <span class="u">didn’t</span> steal it</em> was a blanket denial.  Desrosiers, however, had just said <em><span class="u">I</span> didn’t steal it</em>, which meant that she was fully aware somebody else <em>had</em>.</p>
<p>“Who did, then?” Natasha wanted to know.</p>
<p>“I would assume it was Neustadt himself.”</p>
<p>“Did he?” Nat asked.  “Or are <em>you</em> the one making miniature homunculi?”</p>
<p>Desrosiers frowned.  “Miniature?”</p>
<p>“The little guy.”  Jim held his hand about a foot above the table.  “That tall.  Looked like me as a Ken doll.”</p>
<p>Desrosiers stared at him in apparently genuine horror.  “You’re joking,” she said.  “You <em>must</em> be?”</p>
<p>“No,” said Nat, and told the story in the flattest voice possible.  “We caught him in our room stealing the notebooks, and trapped him in a bucket so we could question him.  He tried to escape, and broke his neck falling off the counter.  We put the dust in a cardboard box and gave it to the Abbot at the Holy Dove for burial.”</p>
<p>For a long moment, Desrosiers was speechless.  “What… what would he have <em>told</em> such a creature?”</p>
<p>“We don’t know,” said Nat.  “We never got a chance to ask.”</p>
<p>“Heavens.”  A few moments passed in silence, as Desrosiers gently rotated her water glass in her hands.  “Neustadt must have refined his homunculi considerably, if he has that kind of control over the gene expression.  Maybe…” she looked at Jim.  “Maybe somewhere in his notes is information that could help you.  If you let me look…”</p>
<p>“Stop!” Jim banged on the table, leading Desrosiers to grab her glass for fear it would fall over.  “Where are you going with this?” Jim demanded.  “You’re gonna hold my future hostage to get what you want?  If you’re capable of helping me, why can’t you do it just because you think it’s the right thing to do?”</p>
<p>“Forget it, ‘Nelle,” said the voice of Neustadt.  “They’re not going to give them to you.”</p>
<p>Nat looked around, puzzled.  She’d examined every face they’d seen in Taormina, even those of the waiters loitering in the sushi restaurant’s door, wondering if they dared intrude to offer menus.  She had not seen Neustadt.  How could he be here without her noticing?  Then she realized he wasn’t walking towards them from the car park – he was climbing over the railing at the edge of the dining patio, where he must have been either crouched at the top or clinging to the side of the sheer cliff below.  She almost admired him.</p>
<p>“You can refuse to give my books to ‘Nelle,” he said, straightening his banged-up green hat, “but not to me.  They’re mine, and I want them back.”</p>
<p>“Isaac, for heaven’s sake, I hadn’t even gotten <em>started</em>,” Desrosiers said, rubbing her forehead.</p>
<p>Everybody else got to their feet.  If Newton tried to run, they would chase him.</p>
<p>“I thought you two didn’t like each other,” said Sam, pointing first at Newton, then at Desrosiers.</p>
<p>“We don’t,” said Neustadt.  “But she made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”</p>
<p>“If he’s going to create the Philosopher’s Stone, I would rather he do it <em>properly</em> and not kill anyone,” Desrosiers explained.  “I can help him with that, and he’ll have all the gold he wants and no explosions.”</p>
<p>“He isn’t planning to do it properly!” Sir Stephen protested.  “Those very notebooks tell of how he hopes to make himself the Anti-Christ and bring about the end of the world!”</p>
<p>“Don’t be an ass,” said Neustadt.  “Surely you realize that everything in those books is metaphorical.  To say I want to bring about the apocalypse is as silly as saying that if Scorpio is poison to the stone then it can be destroyed by scorpion venom!”</p>
<p>Nat folded her arms across her chest, partly to show her defiance and partly because she could no longer resist the urge to check if the books were still in her pockets.  Their weight shifted as she moved, which was reassuring.  “Sir Isaac Newton died centuries ago,” she said.  “Since he left no descendants, and his will does not mention these books, they are the property of the British Crown – as the more famous Dr. Jones would say, <em>they belong in a museum</em>, and <em>this</em> Dr. Jones is going to put them there.”</p>
<p>Newton took a step towards her.  Natasha assumed a fighting stance, but both Jim and Sir Stephen stepped in between her and the approaching alchemist.  She rolled her eyes.  “Boys,” she began, “I can…”</p>
<p>But Jim wasn’t out to protect Natasha.  He hated Newton for reasons of his own, and that was probably why he charged at him.  Jim was several inches taller, but Newton turned out to be less frail than he appeared.  He grabbed Jim’s arm, turned around, and used a self-defense move Nat remembered being taught when she was no more than four or five years old: he lifted with his knees and threw Jim over his shoulder, right off the railing where the restaurant patio looked over the cliffs to the ocean.</p>
<p>Nat heard Jim cry out in terror, and her stomach dropped.  The homunculi were very resilient as long as they didn’t get the pressure to the neck that Newton had mentioned, but a fall from that height would surely be enough to kill anyone.  She ran after him, while Sir Stephen took on the alchemist.</p>
<p>When she looked over the edge, Nat was relieved to find that Jim had managed to grab the concrete edge below the railing and brace his feet against the rocks below, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t still fall.  He was dangling almost by his fingernails, and the coastal highway was some seventy feet below him, with sharp rocks between it and the crashing waves.</p>
<p>“Hang on!” Nat called to him.</p>
<p>“I’m doing it!” he replied.</p>
<p>Nat started to take her jacket off, intending to tie herself to the railing so she could pull him out without also risking a fall.  She had one arm out when something grabbed her right hand.</p>
<p>It felt as if she’d stuck the appendage into a white-hot furnace.  She froze solid, unable to even turn around, unable to think about <em>anything</em> but the intense pain and the smell of burning flesh.  Natasha had rarely screamed in her life, but she screamed now.  The world went white in front of her eyes, and for a moment she lost consciousness.</p>
<p>When her vision returned she was on her knees, staring at leaves on the pavement.  A silver mist seemed to be hanging over everything, and blue and yellow spots were dancing in front of her eyes.  The pain was less now, but that was probably only because the nerves transmitting it had been destroyed.  When Nat raised her head, she saw Newton with a grim expression on his face, holding her right hand with his left – he was wearing some kind of gauntlet, glowing dull orange – while his right pulled the notebooks out of her jacket in slow motion.  Desrosiers was standing behind him, shouting something, but the only thing Nat could hear was her own heartbeat, pulsing slowly in her ears.</p>
<p>Newton let go of her.  Nat fell on her face on the gritty ground, and the two alchemists, having gotten what they’d come for, fled.</p>
<p>She probably passed out again.  Nat came to a few minutes later, now lying on her back, with her hand and wrist still in pain and the others gathered around her.  Somebody had pulled Jim back up.  Sir Stephen’s shirt was in charred rags, with a nasty puckered scar all over his neck and left shoulder.  He would recover from that by the next day.  Sir Stephen could recover from anything.  Sharon was hugging Allen, who was covering his face so he wouldn't have to look at Nat.</p>
<p>Sam was examining Nat’s right hand, though it took her a moment to realize that – what was left of the hand was not recognizable as part of her body.  It was burned in places down to the bone, with scraps of charred flesh and tendon hanging off it.  Natasha’s rational side, which always kept thinking no matter what happened to the rest of her, knew it would have to be amputated.  There was nothing else to be done.  She didn’t have Sir Stephen’s miraculous healing capacity.  Good thing she already knew how to write with her left.</p>
<p>Then Jim pushed Sam out of the way and set a metal bowl down on the pavement.  He pulled one of the flasks from his pocket.  An elastic band was wound around it to mark it as the one they’d taken some elixir from to heal Redwing the falcon.  He grabbed Nat’s wrist and put the remains of her hand into the bowl, then poured the elixir over it.</p>
<p>And <em>oh</em>, but it stung!  It was like putting her hand into a fire all over again.  Nat was acutely aware of every vein, every nerve, every pore of her skin and every tiny hair, every fiber of muscle as the organisms in the elixir connected themselves to her tissues.  Every sell of it was in searing pain.  It went on and on for a hundred years until she decided it couldn’t <em>possibly</em> be healing her.  Maybe if Desrosiers were still here, she would have told them that the elixir couldn’t help burns.  Maybe it would only reconstruct dead and burnt tissue and make it even worse.</p>
<p>Eventually, mercifully, she passed out for the third time.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. What's in a Name</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Nat woke up lying on her back in a bed, with Sir Stephen looking down at her.</p>
<p>“How long was I out?” was her first question.  She didn’t try to sit up yet – something in her gut told her that was a terrible idea – but she did look around.  Most of the walls of the room were painted white, although the one behind the head of the bed was yellow, and the floor was hardwood.  Goldenrod-coloured curtains were drawn back from a pair of French doors that led out onto a little balcony overlooking the town.  Above the bed were two photographs of four-petalled yellow flowers growing among the volcanic rocks of Mount Etna.  This was a hotel room.  “Whose room is this?”</p>
<p>“The room is Madame Desrosiers’ at the Hotel Isabella,” Sir Stephen replied.  “We didn’t think she was likely to come back to it.  You have been asleep perhaps an hour.”</p>
<p>Her head was clearing, so Nat risked raising her head a little.  Sir Stephen was wearing a heather gray t-shirt now, but the burns he’d sustained were peeking out above the collar and below one sleeve.  These looks much improved, more like scar tissue than blistered skin.  All trace would be gone by this time tomorrow.</p>
<p>She gritted her teeth and took a moment to mentally prepare herself for what she might see, then held up her burned hand.</p>
<p>It didn’t hurt anymore, but the real shock was that when Natasha examined it, it looked completely whole.  Even her fingernails were back, although they needed a trim.  The only sign that anything odd had happened was a ragged tan line around her wrist, where the new pale skin met the part that had been out in the Mediterranean sun all week.  She flexed the fingers.  They were a bit stiff, and prickled as if she’d been sitting on them and the circulation was only just coming back, but there was nothing visibly wrong with them.</p>
<p>“Where are Newton and Desrosiers?” Nat asked, letting the hand fall to her side again.</p>
<p>“They escaped into the hills while we were seeing to you,” said Sir Stephen.  “Sam, Clint, and Sharon have gone to search for them.  All three are well-armed.  Your father and James wanted to stay here with you, and Sharon asked me to stay, too, lest the alchemists return to finish what they began.”  He turned to the doorway.</p>
<p>Allen must have been out of the room when Nat actually awakened, but now that he knew she was up he was hurrying in.  He dropped his coffee cup on the floor – it was, fortunately, empty – sat down on the bed so hard it bounced, and gathered Nat up for a hug.  Nothing was said.  He just sat there clutching her so tight it almost made her ribs creak.</p>
<p>A few long moments later he sat up again with tears in his eyes, and took her restored hand in both of hers.  She squeezed his fingers.  When Nat had been hurt during her time in Soviet service, the only people who took an interest were the medical staff, cold and clinical, repairing her so she could be of further use.  Now here was Allen, whose own world would have ended if she’d suffered lasting harm.  It was a warm, safe feeling, at the same time as it was a tremendous responsibility.</p>
<p>“I’m okay, Dad,” she said softly.</p>
<p>“I know.”  He brushed her cheek.  “Thank heavens.”</p>
<p>Jim was now standing in the doorway, although he was hanging back to give Nat and Allen a bit of space.  Nat realized there were a few tears in her own eyes, and quickly wiped them away before smiling at him.</p>
<p>“Thanks,” she said.</p>
<p>“Don’t mention it.”  Jim shook his head.</p>
<p>“No,” said Natasha, “<em>thank you</em>.  That was five days of your life.”</p>
<p>“Maybe not that much,” Jim said.  “We used some on the bird.”</p>
<p>“Still,” Nat insisted.  “Thank you.  Accept it.”</p>
<p>He smiled softly.  “You’re welcome.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>The others returned after midnight, empty-handed and frustrated.  There were hundreds of little farms and villages on the slopes of Mount Etna, many of them now being evacuated ahead of what was looking more and more like a potentially serious eruption.  The police had refused to let the party go as far as they would have liked, and they’d eventually had to conclude that there was no hope of finding Desrosiers and Newton now.  Then, on their way back to Taormina they’d gotten stuck in traffic, crawling along for hours as the entire population tried to flee on roads that were neither well-designed nor well-maintained.</p>
<p>“Did you at least get Laura her pistachios?” Natasha asked.</p>
<p>“Yes, I did!” said Clint proudly.  He pulled two bags of them out of his backpack to put on a table, and then took out a cluster of rather more mysterious objects, held together on raffia like a bunch of fish on a string.  “Also this ceramic garlic.  They had it at a place here in town.  There were all kinds of fruits and vegetables but I liked the garlic best.”</p>
<p>“What’s she gonna do with ceramic garlic?” asked Jim.</p>
<p>“I don’t know, I just thought it was neat,” Clint confessed with a shrug.  The cloves, which were hollow, rang softly against one another as they twisted on the raffia.</p>
<p>“Maybe it’ll keep away ceramic vampires,” Nat suggested.</p>
<p>Sharon snickered.  “You must be feeling better,” she observed.</p>
<p>Nat was sitting up now, and while her head still felt a little muddled it was much better than it had been.  She flexed her hand again and watched the fingers move, apparently normally.  It was no wonder Clint kept rubbing at his side, she thought.  It was a very strange feeling, knowing she’d been injured but not having any evidence of it.  It was as if the new skin itched, but on the inside, where she couldn’t scratch it.  Did Jim feel like that over his whole body?</p>
<p>“The ferries are jammed with people evacuating,” Sharon said with a yawn.  “So we can’t return to the mainland until tomorrow at the earliest.  According to the radio, scientists keep saying the volcano won’t erupt violently, but that’s hard to believe when the government is working so hard to pull everybody out.”</p>
<p>“That’s probably exactly the way the alchemists like it,” Nat said.  “They want to work in privacy, so emptying the surrounding countryside is perfect for them.  Especially if they’re going to create the Stone in or around the volcanic crater.”</p>
<p>“Desrosiers said that was stupid,” Clint reminded her.</p>
<p>“I don’t think we can believe a word Helene Desrosiers says about anything,” Nat replied, “including that.”</p>
<p>“Great,” Clint grumbled.</p>
<p>“Maybe you can get your wife one of those necklaces made of the lava stones,” Sharon suggested.</p>
<p>The others all seemed to be tired, and one by one they retired to sleep on the sofa, in the chairs, or even on the floor of the hotel room, leaving the bed for Natasha.  She wouldn’t have needed it in any event, since she was used to sleeping in uncomfortable places, but she also simply wasn’t sleepy.  She had <em>expected</em> to be exhausted, as if being healed by the elixir ought to be hard work, but instead it seemed to have come with a shot of energy drink.  Even after lying there with her eyes shut for nearly twenty minutes, she was still wide awake.</p>
<p>She felt a warm breeze on her face, opened her eyes to look.  Everybody else seemed to be still asleep – except for Jim, who was standing out on the balcony with the doors open.</p>
<p>The windows on this side of the building faced towards the slopes of the volcano.  The street was so narrow and the buildings crowded so close that the actual peak was not visible, but the rising column of smoke was, lit ruby red from below.  The light flickered ominously as the lava bubbled, crusted, cooled, and then welled up again.  Nat got up, carefully, and crossed to the window to stand next to him.</p>
<p>“Quite the show, huh?” she asked.</p>
<p>“Yeah,” he murmured.</p>
<p>“Another thing you’re glad you got to see?”</p>
<p>“Maybe,” he said.  “Volcanoes are neat.  It would be cool to get up there sometime when it’s not actually erupting, to get a look at the craters and rock formations.”</p>
<p>Nat nodded slowly.  “You know those things exist,” she mused.  “How do you know it?”</p>
<p>“I have no idea,” Jim said.</p>
<p>“What do you know about the Philosopher’s Stone?” asked Nat.</p>
<p>Jim had to think about it for a minute.  “I couldn’t just read that stuff he wrote out in his journals… I wonder if that’s because <em>he</em> can’t read it easily, either.  Maybe I only know the stuff he knows without having to think about it.  I know the Stone uses nuclear reactions to rearrange matter, copying a template.  It’s sort of like the cells I’m made of.  They use the DNA they’re given to rearrange themselves.  That seems to be the basis of alchemy, learning what nature’s templates are and how to copy them and create something new.”</p>
<p>“So he needs gold if he wants to make more gold,” said Natasha.  “And a feather from the holy spirit to make himself a god.”</p>
<p>“You don’t think that’s gonna work, do you?” Jim asked.  He sounded unsure, himself, but then he had reasons to be concerned about what Newton was capable of if anyone did.</p>
<p>“No,” Nat replied firmly.  “Mostly because I don’t think their sacred feather is a real relic.  A feather just wouldn’t last that long.  I’ve seen human hair that was only five hundred years old in a cist burial, and it was all bleached and basically just turned to dust the moment it was touched.  It probably came from a seagull.  All Newton will accomplish with it is turning himself into a flock of birds, or else just a weird mass of keratin.”  It depended on how much detail the Philosopher’s Stone could replicate something in.</p>
<p>Jim didn’t reply.</p>
<p>“Sorry,” she said.  “You don’t want to hear things like that, do you?”</p>
<p>“Not really,” he admitted.  He reached for her hand, then hesitated.  “You don’t think… since those cells have no DNA in them and just copy what they meet, if we touch, will we stick together?”</p>
<p>Nat shrugged and touched his fingers with her right hand.  It felt normal.  “Looks like no.”</p>
<p>They stayed there a few minutes longer, watching the smoke glow red and orange.  It would flicker and die and then start up again, over and over, as the crater simmered below.  Natasha had lived an eventful life, but she’d never been this close to a volcano while it was so visibly active.  It was exhilarating.</p>
<p>Then it stopped.</p>
<p>Because the light had been flickering, it took a few moments before Natasha realized it wasn’t going to start up again soon.  The mist around the peak was still present, lit from below by the lights of the towns and the traffic, but the glow of the volcano itself had died out.</p>
<p>“I guess it’s done for tonight,” said Nat.</p>
<p>“Yeah.”  Jim sighed.  “Even the volcano wants me to go to bed.”</p>
<p>Nat knew now how to put him to sleep.  “Come with me,” she said, squeezing his fingers.</p>
<p>“Why?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Because I want you to.”</p>
<p>“You don’t need me,” Jim told her.  “You’ve got your friends and your father here.  They’ll look after you.”  He was reminding her that they were permanent and he was not, and that she could have real human relationships with them that would last for years.  He didn’t want her to sleep with him out of pity.</p>
<p>“Yeah, but right now I want you,” she said.  Jim needed to feel wanted.  So did Nat sometimes, if she were being honest.</p>
<p>“You sure?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Very sure,”</p>
<p>“All right.”  He stroked her cheek with his thumb, and she smiled at him as he leaned down to let their foreheads touch.  “They’re <em>all</em> gonna see us when they wake up.”</p>
<p>“They can say whatever they want,” Nat replied.  If anybody wanted to judge them, she would let them know exactly what she thought of that.</p>
<hr/>
<p>By morning, the smoke had cleared and the volcano was quiet.</p>
<p>This was definitely not what anyone had expected.  As the group ate breakfast in the hotel’s little restaurant, the news playing on the television above the bar was all about the sudden cessation of the eruption.  Scientists were puzzled, the anchorwoman said, but Etna seemed to have gone back to sleep.  If the volcano remained quiescent for forty-eight hours, the evacuated Sicilians would be allowed to return to their homes on the slopes.  There were interviews with several locals, who expressed their gratitude to God that their farms were safe, and their eagerness to go home.</p>
<p>“They did something,” said Sam, pointing a fork at the TV.</p>
<p>Nat had been thinking the same things.  Desrosiers must have come here because she knew Newton would go to an erupting volcano to tap the geothermal energy – maybe that was where the enormous heat in his gauntlet had come from.  Somehow, he’d convinced her to help him make the Philosopher’s Stone, and now that they had the notebooks, they’d returned to the volcano to drain the rest of its power.</p>
<p>“Do they have everything they need now?” she wondered aloud.  “Are they ready to just make the Stone?”  Maybe they were working on it right now, down in the bowels of the volcano… or would it still be too hot in there?  “Where’s our Voynich book?”</p>
<p>Sharon pulled it out of Sir Stephen’s backpack.  “We still can’t read it,” she said.</p>
<p>“Yeah, but there might be something to give us a hint,” said Nat.</p>
<p>That seemed pretty unlikely even to her, but for the moment nobody had any better ideas, so they passed around the softcover facsimile, flipping pages.  There were no drawings of volcanoes anywhere in the book, but Nat supposed any form of energy would do.  Solar, geothermal, wind… ancient alchemists might have even tried to do it with fire.  The Minoans on Santorini had used the volcanic heat of Thira.  Heaven knew what Rasputin had found in the middle of Siberia, maybe one of the powerful Russian rivers.  And if Newton could drain energy from a volcano to store and move it, he could go anywhere he liked.</p>
<p>Even so, she was pretty confident now that Newton would <em>not</em> go to Australia.  The simple fact that he’d gone out of his way to point them to the place seemed to be evidence enough of that.  She glanced at the book again, as Sharon idly turned pages, and then something caught her eye.</p>
<p>“Wait,” said Nat.  She flipped back a page or two.</p>
<p>It was an illustration of a plant – this entire section of the book was drawings of plants.  Notes in the margins said that botanists believed it might be a sunflower, which suggested that the book was about the flora of the Americas.  Somebody had even offered the theory that its alphabet was an attempt to record an Indigenous American language in a way that would be intelligible to Europeans.  But Natasha, thinking of volcanoes, had noticed something else.</p>
<p>Taormina was full of volcano-related souvenirs and merchandise right now.  As Nat and Jim had walked down the street yesterday, they’d seen multiple versions of an illustration showing a cross-section of the mountain.  The posters, postcards, and t-shirts depicted many fissures branching off a big central well that brought lava to the surface, where it erupted from the vents and gave off steam that rose into a tower with billows at the top.  Everything in alchemy was recorded in codes and metaphors.</p>
<p>“This isn’t botany,” she whispered.  “This is <em>geology</em>.”</p>
<p>A border at the bottom showed yellow flowers with four petals.  Sir Stephen pointed to them.  “There were pictures of these flowers in the hotel room,” he said.</p>
<p>“Four-petalled flowers are an incredibly common medieval art motif,” said Nat… but they were rare in nature, which preferred odd numbers.  “I’ll be right back,” she said, and got up to run to the front desk.</p>
<p>The same man was working there as had told them they’d missed Madame Desrosiers the previous evening.  He took an involuntary step back when Natasha approached him with purpose, and she had to take a moment to readjust her body language before speaking to him.</p>
<p>“<em>There were pictures of yellow flowers in our room</em>,” she said to him.  “<em>I’ve never seen anything like them.  What are they called</em>?”</p>
<p>The man looked relieved that was all she wanted.  “<em>Those are Mount Etna wallflowers</em>,” he said.  “<em>One of the rarest species in Sicily.  They are found on the mountain, and nowhere else</em>.”</p>
<p>A chill went down Natasha’s spine.  “<em>I need a pen and paper, please</em>.”</p>
<p>She returned to the table, and there the entire group spent nearly an hour poring over the page, trying to make something out of the looping letters.  Somewhere in there, Nat was sure, there <em>had</em> to be the name of the mountain… probably spelled <em>Aitna</em>, since alchemists seemed to favour Greek.  The only result, however, was frustration.  They would find groups of five letters with the first and last the same, but trying to apply the cipher elsewhere on the page always ended up in nonsense.  There must be layers and layers of code here, Nat thought, and without that damned key they didn’t know what to look for.  Figuring it out might take years even when they had a real clue.</p>
<p>“If the sunflower is a diagram of the mountain,” Nat said,  “maybe these notes talk about things like the best places to collect its energy.”  Unfortunately, it wasn’t a map to any scale.  Its unreadable text could not tell them where to look for Newton and Desrosiers.</p>
<p>Sharon turned the page.  There was another plant… was this one also a volcano?  There was another border down the bottom, this one looking like indistinct balls of white fluff that might have been flowers but didn’t have any distinctive features like the four petals of the wallflowers.  Was there any way…</p>
<p>“Vesuvius,” said Jim suddenly.  “We gotta go to Mount Vesuvius!”</p>
<p>“Why Vesuvius?” asked Sam.  He reached over to turn another page.  “The Mediterranean’s full of volcanos.  What about Stromboli or Kolumbo?”</p>
<p>“No, he’ll go to Vesuvius,” said Jim.  “I’m <em>positive</em>.”</p>
<p>“Why?” Nat asked, and then realized.  “Of course!  Yes, he’s right!  He’s got to be!”</p>
<p>“You’re biased,” said Clint.</p>
<p>“No, I’m not!” Nat insisted.  “It’s a word game!  Alchemy is all in puzzles, codes, and puns!  Newton in German is <em>Neustadt</em>, and in Greek it’s <em>Neapoli</em>.  That’s the area in Athens where his apartment was.  What’s the city below Vesuvius?” she asked, and waited expectantly.  One by one, she saw her companions’ expressions change as the light dawned.  Jim smiled proudly.</p>
<p>“All right,” said Sam, as Sharon closed the book.  “We’re going to Naples.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>With the evacuees still stranded on the mainland, it was no problem to find a ferry.  In Calabria they caught a train heading north to Termini in Rome, where they transferred to one bound for Naples.</p>
<p>It was a hot day when they arrived, but it wasn’t like the pounding dry heat of Santorini or Athens.  Naples was drowning in a thick, humid atmosphere that sweating did nothing to relieve because there was no wind to make it evaporate.  The locals didn’t seem to mind, but tourists walked around fanning themselves, their faces red and glistening from exertion.  Shops selling bottled water and gelato did brisk business.</p>
<p>It was late in the afternoon when their train entered the city, and they could see a cruise ship in port.  Nat caught Clint peering at it, trying to figure out whether it was a familiar one.</p>
<p>“It’s not,” she said.  “Wrong company.  See the logo on the superstructure?”</p>
<p>Clint nodded and looked back down at the screen of his phone.  He’d just typed in the question <em>would you like anything from Naples?</em>  A flashing icon suggested that Laura Francis, back home in Nottinghamshire, was typing her reply.</p>
<p>“What are you looking for?” asked Sam.</p>
<p>“I don’t know yet,” Clint replied.  “She hasn’t answered.”</p>
<p>“No,” Sam said, “I mean why were you looking at the boat?”</p>
<p>“He thinks the <em>Scorpio II </em>is following us,” said Nat.</p>
<p>Clint shook his head.  “Next time we are definitely doing this on a cruise ship,” he said.  “If I’m gonna hop from island to island around the Mediterranean without ever having time to stop and <em>do</em> anything, I’m gonna do it with room service.”</p>
<p>“Foot massages,” said Sharon.</p>
<p>“Wi-fi,” said Natasha.</p>
<p>“Cold beer,” Jim agreed.</p>
<p>“That’s it.”  Sharon nodded.  “When we get back, we’re telling Fury and the Queen that from now on we <em>only</em> travel by cruise ship.”</p>
<p>Nat grinned as she imagined that conversation.  Fury would roll his eye, fully aware that they were joking and determined not to dignify it with an acknowledgement.  The Queen, on the other hand, might just take them seriously.  She spent her own vacations in Monte Carlo and her private palaces, so why not?</p>
<p>Clint’s phone vibrated.  He look a look and groaned.</p>
<p>“What’s it say?” asked Nat.</p>
<p>He turned it around to show them the screen.  Laura’s reply said simply, <em>surprise me.</em></p>
<p>Sam whistled.  “You’re being tested now, my man,” he declared.</p>
<p>“I know,” Clint said, “and I don’t think one of those glitter-covered panda figurines is going to cut it.”</p>
<p>If Clint <em>had</em> wanted tourist kitsch he would have had no trouble getting it.  The moment the group stepped out of Napoli Centrale, they were bombarded by vendors offering them tours and trinkets.  Nat kept her head down and tried not to make eye contact, but she did have to look where she was going and the Neapolitans were happy to follow people out into the street.  Brochures, maps, hats, and sunglasses were all thrust into her face in quick succession, and it was difficult to keep a lid on the instinct telling her to throw these people over the nearest wall.</p>
<p>“I have changed my mind,” Sir Stephen announced, as they shooed the last of them away.</p>
<p>“About what?” asked Sharon.</p>
<p>“About whether this is like going on pilgrimage,” he said, and turned to wave away a man offering tour tickets.  “No, thank you, Sir, we do not want to visit Positano!”  Returning his attention to Sharon, he went on, “this is exactly the sort of thing that greets a pilgrim in Canterbury!”</p>
<p>“Canterbury didn’t become a place of pilgrimage until the late twelfth century,” said Natasha, but she wasn’t going to worry about it much.  Sir Stephen had come from a world that didn’t worry much about historical accuracy.</p>
<p>From the edge of the bay, there was a clear view of Mount Vesuvius.  Mount Etna in Sicily was surrounded by other peaks, all of which had once been craters of the volcano but were now extinct.  Vesuvius stood alone.  From this angle only one of its paired cones was visible, covered with green woods all the way to the snow line.  There hadn’t been a major eruption since 1944, leaving the vegetation plenty of time to recolonize the slopes.</p>
<p>Even so, the mountain looked almost exactly like how a child might draw a picture of a volcano: a steep conical hill with a crater in the top.  Nat had to wonder how the people of Pompeii and Herculaneum had ever thought this was a good place to live.  Then again, she observed, here they were nearly two thousand years later, with millions of people blithely living in Naples and Sorrento.  The very reason this city was called <em>Napoli</em> was because it was the <em>New City</em>, founded after an eruption had destroyed the older one.</p>
<p>Volcanic soil was supposed to be excellent for wine grapes.  Maybe in Italy, that alone was enough to make people stay.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. The Mouth of the Mountain</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>While Clint puzzled over what to bring his wife from Naples, the rest of the group tried to figure out where they should look for the two alchemists.  The most obvious answer was the volcano itself.  Newton and Desrosiers had gone to Mount Etna to tap its energy for their reactor.  It seemed likely they would do the same with Vesuvius, which meant they’d need to find there way into the heart of the mountain.  How would they do that?  Vesuvius was huge, its two cones studded with several vents and craters.</p>
<p>They bought a geological map of the volcano from a tourist bookshop, and pulled out the Voynich manuscript again.</p>
<p>The problem was how to make these match.  The medieval manuscript contained two-dimensional maps of three-dimensional structure, drawn in elevation so that they could be disguised as pictures of plant roots.  The modern map showed the area from above based on aerial photographs, and the idea of finding a match between the two seemed more and more impossible the longer they looked.  This was the sort of thing people needed computer models for, Nat thought… they needed an image of the volcano’s guts that could be rotated and studied from different angles.</p>
<p>They didn’t have that, and they couldn’t read the strange alphabet.  That left them with only the smaller flowers decorating the margins of the pages.  There were all sorts of these, ranging from the already-identified Etna Wallflowers to the pink puffballs to things that drooped from vines to long thin white ones so lacking in detail that Nat wouldn’t have known they were flowers if there hadn’t been the context of the other images.</p>
<p>“We need to ask somebody,” Sharon decided.</p>
<p>They spent the next hour or so doing that – approaching random Neapolitans and asking them if they knew of any plant that grew <em>only</em> on Vesuvius.  Results were not as helpful as they might have hoped.  Most people had no idea.  A couple of individuals offered that there might be somebody at the university who knew.  Whatever might be up there, it clearly wasn’t a matter of local pride the way the little yellow flowers on Mount Etna were.</p>
<p>Eventually, they decided they were going to have to hike up the slopes and see for themselves.</p>
<p>That was a daunting prospect.  Climbing mountains hadn’t been on anybody’s list of things they’d been expecting to do when they’d left Folkestone on the Chunnel train, so some shopping was required.  Luckily, climbing Vesuvius was a popular activity for tourists, so there were plenty of shops which could sell them boots, ropes, and the hats and jackets they’d need at the peak, which in October was cold enough for a dusting of snow.  Fury was going to have a fit when he saw their expense report, Nat thought, even <em>without</em> any voyages by cruise ship.</p>
<p>About an hour up the slope, having carefully examined multiple plants but not found anything that looked unique enough to match one of the Voynich illustrations, they happened across a tour group.  Hoping the guide might know something about the local flora, Nat and the others slipped in among the crowd and tried to look like they belonged there.  The thought had also occurred to her that a tour would probably be taking the easiest route, but that turned out not to be the case.  Maybe there <em>was</em> no easy route up Vesuvius.  Despite the air growing chillier, many of the tourists were red-faced and sweating as they climbed.</p>
<p>“You okay?” she asked Allen at one point.</p>
<p>“I’m fine,” he panted.  “The exercise is good for me.”</p>
<p>“Are you sure?  We can find you somewhere to get a ride back if you…”</p>
<p>“Natalie, I’m <em>fine</em>,” he repeated.  “If you guys can do this, so can I, all right?”</p>
<p>“If you say so,” said Nat.  Was the fact that she was worried about him a good indicator for their relationship?  What about the fact that he was determined to stick with her?  Did he really feel like he was up to it, or did he just not want to be baggage, as he’d worried he was while they chased the Red Death across the British Isles?  Was he thinking that if she could survive having her hand burned off, he could survive climbing a hill?</p>
<p>The tour guide didn’t seem to notice anyone was uncomfortable.  He was a wiry man in his fifties or sixties, who trotted up the slope like he’d done this every day for his entire life.  He would get thirty or forty yards ahead, and then have to stop and wait for everybody else to catch up so he could tell them about the area around them.</p>
<p>“Vesuvius is still an active volcano, and the area around Naples is prone to earthquakes,” he announced, as they reached a scenic outlook.  “The government has been offering financial rewards to people who will agree to relocate, but most stay.  Their logic is that their grandparents and great-grandparents lived here, and there was no eruption in those times, so why should there suddenly be one now?  The people in ancient Pompeii and Oplontis probably thought the same things.”</p>
<p>That made sense, Nat thought.  The ubiquitous <em>it won’t happen to me</em> mindset that led people to do all kinds of stupid things.</p>
<p>“Has the mountain been abnormally active lately?” asked Clint.</p>
<p>“Not abnormally,” the guide replied, “but everything in the area must be built according to seismic codes, and if anything happens we’ll all have to evacuate.  If you’ve been paying attention to the news, you’ll have heard about people who had to leave the land around Mount Etna in the last few days.  We’re always ready to do the same thing here if we need to.  Are you worried?”</p>
<p>“Maybe a little,” said Clint.</p>
<p>“Then why did you decide to climb the mountain?” the guide asked.  Other people laughed.</p>
<p>Natasha decided to seize this opportunity.  “I visited Mount Etna a while back and they told me about these yellow flowers that don’t grow anywhere else but on the volcano.  Do you have anything like that on Vesuvius?”</p>
<p>The guide, who so far had answered nearly every question without needing to think about it, paused – that wasn’t a good sign.  “Not that I’ve ever heard,” he said.  “I think I remember reading that there was some plant that was wiped out in the 1944 eruption, but I don’t know any more about it.  I’ll have to look into that,” he said cheerfully.</p>
<p>“Interesting,” said Nat, although inwardly she was cursing.  A plant that had gone extinct in the 1940s meant there would be very few people alive who’d ever actually seen it and possibly no colour photographs.  Identifying the Vesuvius page might be a lost cause.</p>
<p>As they climbed higher, the air got colder.  The trees became smaller and scrawnier, and the landforms that surrounded them stranger and stranger.  The rocks nearer the peak were black and red, like those in the walls on Santorini, and protrusions and small cliffs were folded into odd shapes where lava had flowed around obstacles or piled up on top of itself.  Smaller stones at the side of the path were full of air bubbles and came in very irregular shapes, looking almost like chunks of hardened foam.</p>
<p>“You want a present for your wife, you’ve got all the pumice stones in the world,” Sam observed.</p>
<p>“Laura just buys the white ones from the bath shop,” said Clint.</p>
<p>“Oh, look at this!” the guide exclaimed, pointing down from an overlook.  “If you look down there, you can see some vulcanologists checking their equipment!  They have sensors all over the mountain to tell them about the heat, the escape of gases, and the movement of the earth.  At times like this, it’s especially important to know what’s going on deep underground.  The volcanism of the entire Mediterranean is fed by the meeting of the African and European crustal plates.  If there is activity in one area, as there was in Etna yesterday, it might spread to other areas as well.  They must be considering Etna a warning that they should look very closely at Vesuvius.”</p>
<p>Natasha looked where he indicated – and her heart began to beat faster.  Sure enough, two white-suited figures were working next to a gash in the ground at the bottom of a shallow fissure.  What drew her attention, though, was that the gash was surrounded by a scatter of yellowish-white objects that didn’t look like flowers.  Hadn’t she seen something reminiscent of that in the manuscript?</p>
<p>“What’s the white stuff?” asked Jim, before Nat could do so.  “We’re not high enough for snow.”</p>
<p>“Sulfur crystals,” said the tour guide.  “If the wind were blowing in the other direction we’d be able to smell it.  One of the reasons the scientists wear breathing apparatus is not just because it smells like rotten eggs, but because the gases associated with it are extremely toxic.  The poet Dante said sulfur was the odor of hell.”</p>
<p>The individuals at the vent were much too far away for anyone to see their faces even if they <em>hadn’t</em> been wearing full-body protective gear.  It was impossible to even tell if they were men or women.  Nat couldn’t even tell what they were doing except that one of them crouched down… and moments later, the mountain began to rumble.</p>
<p>People in the tour group cried out in alarm, and the guide held up his hands.</p>
<p>“Stay calm!” he said.  “Stay calm and stay away from the edge!  It’s just a small tremor, we have them here all the time.”</p>
<p>The sound was alarming, but the actual shaking was barely enough to feel.  The guide behaved as if nothing were out of the ordinary, but Nat couldn’t shake the feeling that something the crouching figure had done must have triggered the event.  A few seconds later, the tremor stopped as the individual stood up again… and perhaps it was Nat’s imagination, but she felt as if the air temperature dropped a couple of degrees.  The hairs on the back of her neck prickled.</p>
<p>“There, you see?” asked the guide.  “All over.”</p>
<p>The sun glinted off something metallic as the two figures moved further into the vent.  Or was one of them carrying something that glowed?</p>
<p>“Gather around everybody,” the tour guide said.  “I need to make sure you’re all here.  There should be thirty of you.”  He began to count.</p>
<p>Nat motioned to her companions.  “Let’s go before he realizes there’s thirty-seven.”</p>
<p>“You think it’s them?” Sam asked.  It was barely a question – he’d seen the same things Nat had.</p>
<p>“It better be,” said Jim.</p>
<p>“Down, boy,” Nat told him.  “You don’t want to be thrown off another cliff.”</p>
<p>“Oh, I’m ready this time,” Jim promised.</p>
<p>The group quietly separated from the tour and began looking for a way down to the vent.  There was no direct route, but they soon found a little path, marked by the hoofprints of goats or sheep, that skirted the edge of the cleft with the vent in the bottom.  The sides were gravelly and it would have been easy to slide right down into it, but the smell of sulfur hung thick in the air and everybody remembered the guide’s statement about poisonous gases.</p>
<p>As they got closer, the path seemed to get harrower and steeper, and they had to hang on to trees and bushes to keep from falling.  At any moment they expected to meet the two figures in white coming the other way, but they did not, and it did not appear there was any other way to get back u the hillside.  Finally, they made it to the lower end of the fissure, where they crouched in the foliage and waited to see who would climb out.</p>
<p>They waited.  And they waited.  And they waited.  The sun sank towards the horizon, and the air got colder.</p>
<p>Nat had played waiting games like this before, and she hated them.  It was like lying in bed in the morning wanting to check the time, but suspecting that if she did she’d find there were only thirty seconds left before her alarm would go off.  She desperately wanted to stand up for a better look into the vent, but if she did, the two supposed scientists might see <em>her</em>.</p>
<p>Eventually, she just couldn’t take it anymore.  Very slowly and carefully, she leaned down to put a cheek on the ground and peek <em>under</em> the bushes.  From there she could just <em>barely</em> see the bottom of the vent with the sulfur crystals, but no sign of any human beings.  That gave her the courage to stand up for a <em>proper</em> look, again moving very carefully to avoid making any noise.</p>
<p>“What do you see?” whispered Sharon.</p>
<p>Nat sighed.  “Nobody,” she said aloud.  “There’s nobody there.”</p>
<p>The others took this as their cue to see for themselves.  One by one they sat or stood up, not nearly so subtly as Natasha had done, and everybody saw the same thing: nothing.  The two white-suited scientists, or whoever they’d been, were gone.</p>
<p>“Where the hell did they go?” asked Jim.</p>
<p>The options were very limited.  “Either they climbed up one of the slopes,” said Natasha, “or they went into the vent.”</p>
<p>The first possibility could be quickly eliminated.  There was no other way out of the fissure – the slopes were steep and covered with slippery gravel, and getting up them would have required ropes, harnesses, and a team of other people to do it safely.  The pair <em>must</em> have gone into the vent itself.  Could somebody <em>do</em> that and survive?  They’d been wearing heat suits and breathing apparatus, but was that enough to go <em>inside</em> a volcano?</p>
<p>Then Nat noticed something – or rather, she noticed where something was missing.  “What do you smell?” she asked.</p>
<p>There was a moment in which everybody stood around sniffing, trying to figure out what she meant.</p>
<p>“Rocks?” said Clint.  “Damp grass?”</p>
<p>“Nothing much,” said Jim.  “Why?”</p>
<p>“The brimstone smell is gone!” Sir Stephen exclaimed.</p>
<p>He was right.  They hadn’t been able to smell sulfur from the lookout above the fissure, but they’d smelled it on the way down and while they were waiting in the brush.  Now it had faded away.</p>
<p>“Is it <em>gone</em> gone, or did we just get used to it?” Clint asked.</p>
<p>Natasha shrugged.  She started to climb over the lip of the fissure, surrounded by its spikes of crystalline sulfur, but Jim grabbed her arm.</p>
<p>“Let me do it,” he said.</p>
<p>“Are you sure?” she asked.</p>
<p>“Newton said I could be strangled, and Mrs. Flamel said my cells will fall apart,” he said, “but if I’m cut I heal, and nobody said anything about me being poisoned or suffocated.”</p>
<p>“That doesn’t mean you <em>can’t</em> be,” Allen protested.</p>
<p>“Yeah, but maybe I’m less <em>likely</em> to be affected than any of you,” he said.  “And if I die, there’s nobody to miss me.”</p>
<p>Nat wanted to protest that <em>she</em> would miss him… but that would have sounded silly when she’d only known him a few days.  She caught Sir Stephen’s eye and knew in her gut that he wanted to protest, too.  He wouldn’t do so either, though, because Jim would think Sir Stephen still considered him a substitute for Buckeye.  So he kept quiet, and Nat just nodded and moved out of the way so Jim could climb past her into the gap in the rocks.</p>
<p>He pulled his t-shirt up over the lower half of his face as he made his way down.  The others were all watching intently, almost holding their collective breath, so they could hear every step as Jim’s sneakers crunched on the gravel.  By accident he trod on a patch of the whitish crystals, which made him cough and gag as the stink of sulfur filled the air.  Nat wondered if he would turn back, but he kept going, taking more care where he put his feet, until he reached the edge of the vent.  There, he squatted down and peered into the darkness inside the mountain, and Nat could see his back moving as he breathed deeply, testing the air.</p>
<p>At last, he straightened up and waved to the others.  “I think it’s okay!” he called.  “It’s warm, but not too hot.  Just be careful of the crystals.”</p>
<p>The others began to work their own way down.  Sharon and Natasha went first, and the rest of them formed a human chain, holding hands up to the shrubs where Sir Stephen, the strongest, acted as the anchor point.  Nat let go of Sharon’s hand at the bottom, and Sharon and Jim helped the rest of them down while Nat squatted at the edge of the vent to see for herself.</p>
<p>Nothing but darkness was visible within, and no noxious vapors were rising out as far as she could tell.  The heat was like an over than had been turned off and was cooling, rather than one that was still on full blast.  Natasha felt a bead of sweat roll down the middle of her back, but it was no worse than the heat of the full sun in Athens.</p>
<p>Another burst of sulfur smell announced that somebody had stepped on the crystals again.  Clint had his own shirt over his nose as he came and knelt next to Natasha.</p>
<p>“It smells like the time Lucky ate the deviled eggs Laura made for the church picnic.  He farted all night long,” he grumbled.  “See anything?”</p>
<p>“Nope,” she replied.  “You still got that fishhook arrow?”</p>
<p>He reached into his quiver and pulled it out.  “Right here.”</p>
<p>“Great.”  Nat stood up and turned to face away from him.  “Hook it through the back collar of my t-shirt and let it unreel.  I can follow the line back if I get lost.”</p>
<p>“To think you guys said I’d never use it!” he laughed.</p>
<p>With Clint’s fishline to be her thread out of the labyrinth, Nat turned on a flashlight and climbed carefully into the fissure.  The blue-white LEDs illuminated weird, sharp shapes in the walls, formed by the folded lava – the way the shadows played across these made them look unpleasantly organic, as if she were climbing into something’s petrified corpse.  In places, she saw the light glint off charcoal from long-buried trees.  In front of her there was only one tunnel, a steep slope heading down into the heart of the mountain.</p>
<p>It looked treacherous, but the rocks were rough and porous, so that once she put a foot down, there wasn’t much chance of slipping.  When she tried to find handholds, however, she discovered that the walls were worryingly warm, like a mug with a hot drink in it – not so hot as to burn, but warm enough to be uncomfortable if she kept her fingers in one place for too long.</p>
<p>As she descended it got darker and darker, until the flashlight beam was the only illumination in total blackness.  Nat looked over her shoulder, and saw the vent opening as a rather distant-looking beam of light falling on dark rocks below, and realized with a shiver that she could go no further.  This simply wasn’t safe.  Anyone or anything could be waiting in the dark.  The fishline could get caught on the sharp rocks and snap.  Even girls from the Red Room had to weigh up the odds of success or failure in a situation like this… a <em>normal</em> person would never have come down here in the first place.  Little as she liked it, she knew she had to go back.</p>
<p>Halfway back up, she slipped and had to grab at the rocks to keep herself from falling.  The edges were jagged and sharp, and the stone dug painfully into the flesh on her palms and knees – even though she knew nobody here would judge her for it, Nat gritted her teeth to keep from crying out.  Her jaw remained tight as she climbed the rest of the way on all fours and emerged, panting, back into the red sunset.  After the claustrophobic warmth inside the vent, the cool outside air was a great relief.</p>
<p>“Are you okay, Ginger Snap?” Allen asked her, and then said, “oh, no, your hand!”</p>
<p>Nat looked down.  Her knees were bloody from crawling on the sharp rocks, as was her left hand.  The right one, however, the one that Newton had burned away and Jim had grown back – it was fine.  That was creepy.  What was it like, she wondered, to have that happen over your whole <em>body</em>?</p>
<p>“Did you see anything?” asked Sharon.</p>
<p>She shook her head.  “The tunnel goes way down inside the volcano.  It could lead anywhere.  I don’t want to try to explore it without proper caving equipment.  I’m <em>sure</em> they’ve got something going on in there, though,” she added.  “Newton’s obsessed with the variations on his name.  He would think Naples is the only place for him to fulfill his destiny or whatever.  The New City.”  She paused as another piece clicked.  “Have any of you read the Greek New Testament?  Is what’s left after judgment day called God’s <em>kingdom</em>?  Or God’s <em>city</em>?  Because the <em>New City</em>…”</p>
<p>“Stop, this is making my head hurt,” Clint complained.</p>
<p>“A volcano’s main vent connects to a magma chamber deep inside the Earth,” Natasha went on, as things once again began falling together in her head.  “If you really wanted to blow a hole in the planet, to do something that would absolutely bring about the end of the world as we know it… deep down on a fault line would be the place to do it.  Like the guide said, you’d set off every volcano in the Mediterranean.  It’d be something like an asteroid impact, throwing dust and ash into the air to block out the sun.  A mass extinction.”</p>
<p>Nobody would have known that in Newton’s time, when the best theory about the origin of life on Earth had been that God created it in seven days.  The Book of Revelation and whatever other, heretical texts he’d read may have told Newton <em>what</em> the Anti-Christ was supposed to do, but modern science had told him <em>how</em> to do it.</p>
<p>“Desrosiers will stop him, though, won’t she?” asked Sharon.  “He must have told <em>her</em> that he only wants to make gold.  If he tries to do anything crazy, she’ll object, right?”</p>
<p>“She’s got the notebooks and everything,” Sam agreed.  “She’ll figure it out.”</p>
<p>She probably would.  Desrosiers was the one who had told him that nobody wanted to die.  Even Newton didn’t really want to <em>die</em>.  He thought that by killing everybody <em>else</em> he could ensure his own immortality.  At the same time, when Nat looked around at her companions she could tell that not one of them was actually willing to just trust that Desrosiers would handle it.  The only way to be sure was to do it themselves.</p>
<p>“We must find her again,” Sir Stephen said.</p>
<p>“How?” asked Sharon.</p>
<p>She had a point.  Finding Desrosiers on Sicily had been very difficult and even then, they’d only succeeded because she’d deliberately left them a clue in the form of the passport.  How would they find her when she was actively avoiding them?</p>
<p>“We know she likes swanky hotels,” said Sam.</p>
<p>“That’s true,” Nat agreed.  At Guedelon, the construction workers had lived in tents and bunkhouses, while Desrosiers had her expensive RV.  She’d had a nice room in Athens, and had been at one of the best hotels in Taormina.  She’d be somewhere with a pool and twenty-four hour room service.  “What’s the nicest place in Naples?”</p>
<p>They scrambled back down the mountainside towards the nearest town.  It was dark, and they were all sweating and exhausted, by the time they reached Ercolano, but they were fortunately still in time to get tickets for the Circumvesuviana Railway back to Naples.  The station had both water and wi-fi for sale, so they had a few minutes to catch their breaths and search for the best hotels in area while they waited for the train.  Having gotten a list, Nat began calling them one by one.</p>
<p>“<em>Bonjour</em>,” she said, when the clerks picked up.  “<em>I would like to speak to Madame Helene Desrosiers</em>.”  They had no evidence she was still travelling under that name, but they also had no indication that she <em>wasn’t</em>.  “<em>I am told she is a guest with you, but I don’t know the room number.  It’s very urgent.  Her daughter in France has been in an accident</em>.”</p>
<p>The first two hotels she contacted offered their apologies and said they had no guest under that name.  On the third call, to the Romeo Hotel on the waterfront, she hit pay dirt.</p>
<p>“<em>I’m sorry, Madame</em>,” the clerk replied, “<em>Signora Desrosiers has already checked out.  Her ship is departing tonight</em>.”</p>
<p>“<em>Son bateau</em>?” asked Natasha.  There <em>had</em> been a cruise ship in the harbour earlier… was Desrosiers leaving on that?  Had she already realized Newton was up to no good, and abandoned him?  But if so, why was she simply leaving instead of trying to talk him out of ending the world?  Maybe she’d taken the notebooks with her or something… something he wouldn’t notice was missing until he went to get the reactor started.  There was only one way to find out.</p>
<p>“<em>Which ship</em>?” she asked.</p>
<p>“<em>Je ne sais pas, Madame.  There are two in port right now</em>.”</p>
<p>“<em>I’ll see if I can catch up with her there.  Merci beaucoup</em>.”  Nat disconnected and relayed the information to the others.  “She’s gotten on a ship.”</p>
<p>“Why?” asked Sam.</p>
<p>“We’ll ask her,” Nat said.</p>
<p>They took the train back to Napes, and reached the station to find that the cruise ship they’d seen there earlier was already gone.  That was deeply disheartening, especially when they checked the timetables and found it had been gone for several hours… until Sharon did the math and pointed out that it had put out to sea about the time they’d been watching the two figures on the volcano.  If those had indeed been Desrosiers and Newton, she couldn’t have been on board.  Two others, however, had since arrived: the <em>Pearl Princess</em> and their old friend, the <em>Scorpio II</em>.</p>
<p>“I <em>knew</em> it was following us,” Clint declared.</p>
<p>Nat licked her lips, remembering something they’d read in one of Newton’s notebooks – something Newton himself had later referenced.  “Scorpio is supposed to be poison to the Philosopher’s Stone,” she said.  “Is it a coincidence?  Or would she deliberately take <em>that</em> ship to thwart him?”</p>
<p>“Does it matter?” asked Jim.</p>
<p>“Not really,” Nat decided.  “The only thing that matters is how we get on board.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0020"><h2>20. Stowaways</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The <em>Scorpio II</em> was still at the docks, tied with mooring ropes as thick as a human arm, but it didn’t look as if it would be there much longer.  Even from as far away as the Molo Beverello, the party could see deckhands running around on the ship, and when they got closer they found a long lineup of passengers waiting in the car park to board.  Crew members were checking IDs at both the bottom and top of the gangplank… they would have to find another way in.</p>
<p>Fortunately, Nat didn’t consider that a problem.  During her career as a spy, she’d stowed away on airplanes, submarines, trains, and semi-trucks.  She’d infiltrated banks, museums, shops, drug repositories, police stations, and most recently a university archaeology department.  A cruise ship ought to be comparatively easy.  Every window and door on the entire ship was a possible way in.  They just had to pick one.</p>
<p>It couldn’t be anything on the side of the ship that faced the port, of course, because they would be seen by hundreds of people.  There would be fewer watching eyes if they went in at the stern, but that still faced inland.  That meant they had to go around the starboard side, the one that faced out into the bay.</p>
<p>The first step was stealing a boat.  Naples was a holiday destination, so there were plenty of private boats moored in marinas all up and down the bay.  The group boarded a small sailboat, and headed around to the far side of the <em>Scorpio II</em>.  The bottom few rows of cabin windows, likely to be splashed in rough seas, did not open, but higher up there were staterooms with balconies.</p>
<p>“This is not a ship,” said Sir Stephen in awe, as they brought their little boat alongside the towering vessel.  “This is a cathedral!  This is a <em>dozen</em> cathedrals!”</p>
<p>“Not a cathedral, a palace,” said Nat.  “That’s the whole point.”  She studied the rows of balconies.  “We’ll take the lowest row of balconies, because that minimizes the risk of anyone seeing us climb by.  That one there doesn’t have any chairs on it.”  She pointed to one close to the corner at the starboard rear end.  “That <em>probably</em> means there’s nobody in there.  They wouldn’t waste balcony chairs on an empty stateroom.”  She hoped.</p>
<p>Clint smiled.  “Is it grappling hook arrow time?” he asked hopefully.</p>
<p>“It is <em>absolutely</em> grappling hook arrow time!” Nat agreed.</p>
<p>“Brilliant!” said Clint.  He found the arrow in his quiver, fitted it to the bowstring, and fired.  The grappling hook arrow was too heavy to go very high, but it didn’t need to – it only needed to drop back over the balcony railings for the hooks to spring out, and then let Clint pull it back and secure the end to the cleats on their sailboat.  Nat gave it a tug.</p>
<p>“All right,” she said.  “Now, you’re going to have to brace yourself against the back of the ship with your feet in order to climb, but you have to be very careful.  If you go thump on the wall, people inside are going to hear and come to the windows to investigate.  Quietly does it.”</p>
<p>Sharon went first, and she did an outstanding job.  Each foot came down very softly as she pulled herself up hand-over-hand, and climbed over the balcony railing to come down on her tiptoes without making a sound.</p>
<p>“Perfect!”  Nat made the circle sign with her thumb and forefinger.  “If everybody else can do as well, we’ll be golden.”</p>
<p>Sir Stephen went next.  He was not by nature somebody who moved in a subtle fashion, so he climbed with exaggerated care, as if he were a cartoon character.  Nat kept waiting for him to slip and fall into the water, but he did not, and Sharon helped him over the railing and onto the balcony.  Allen was, if anything, even more careful than Sir Stephen.  Jim and Sam shimmied up, and then Natasha went second-to-last, since Clint had to go last in order to rewind the line on his grappling hook arrow.</p>
<p>It was to Nat that disaster happened, and it wasn’t her fault.  A large cargo vessel was maneuvering by the cruise ship, and its wake nudged their little boat against the side of the larger one.  It was a very small motion next to the enormous ships, but it was enough that the rope Natasha was climbing suddenly went slack, slamming her against the window of one of the lower cabins.  The curtains inside moved.</p>
<p>Nat looked down and waved to Clint.  He grabbed an oar to push the little boat away from the giant metal wall of the <em>Scorpio II</em> and towards its stern, allowing Natasha to roll to one side of the window for a second or two.  It wasn’t much time, but it was enough.  The passenger inside looked out the window to see what had gone<em> thud</em>, found nothing, shrugged, and let the fabric fall again.</p>
<p>With a sigh of relief, Nat kept climbing.  The wake from the cargo ship lingered, and the sailboat kept bobbing for a while, but she was prepared now.  She bent her knees and let herself move with the water.  Jim and Allen helped her onto the balcony, and Clint came up last, reeling in the line as he went.  When he was a yard or so up, he reached down with the tip of his bow and hit a lever on the sailboat’s small outboard motor.  The little boat took off out to sea.</p>
<p>“Made it!” he said in a loud whisper, as Sam and Sharon pulled him over the railing.</p>
<p>The balcony doors had a lock, but it was a very simple one.  Nat got it open in under a second and slid the glass door aside, and on the other side of the curtains they found that the cabin was not unoccupied after all.</p>
<p>It was certainly <em>empty</em> – almost all the furniture had been removed.  Where there would normally have been a bed, desk, and sofa there were now piles of cushions and spread-out newspapers, and lounging on and among these were four large dogs, two small ones, a white cockatiel in a cage, and a serval cat.  The dogs and the cat immediately got to their feet and came to inspect these visitors.</p>
<p>“Be very quiet,” Nat whispered to the others.  “Don’t startle them.  Startle them, they start barking, and we’re finished.”  She wondered if this were a general pet suite, but decided that wasn’t likely.  Most people didn’t vacation with their pets, and the ships probably didn’t allow them unless they were service animals.  This would be some spoiled VIP who’d decided to bring their whole menagerie, and had paid for a second room to keep them all in.</p>
<p>“I got this, too,” Clint promised.  He knelt down on the ground and offered a fist to the first of the small dogs – a Yorkshire terrier.  It and the Bichon Frise trotted up to sniff, followed by the Rottweiler and the fluffy white Samoyed.  Clint let them smell him, then petted their heads and called them good boys and girls.  Within minutes, they were all over him with licks and wagging tails.</p>
<p>Sam, meanwhile, approached the cockatiel.  It eyed him suspiciously, then squawked, “<em>but soft, what light through yonder window breaks?</em>”</p>
<p>Some spoiled VIP who’d taught their bird to quote Shakespeare, Nat observed.</p>
<p>“He says he belongs to the Baroness,” Sam said.  “She’s got another room next door, but she’s in here regularly.”</p>
<p>“<em>But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?</em>” the bird repeated.</p>
<p>“He won’t tell as long as we bring him some fruit,” Sam added.</p>
<p>“Wait.”  Jim held up a hand.  “That bird actually speaks English, but it’s saying something <em>else</em> in a <em>different</em> English?”</p>
<p>“Who’s the bird whisperer here?” Sam demanded.  “You or me?”</p>
<p>Through all this the cat was sitting in a corner, glaring at them with its ears back.  Servals were several times the size of a normal housecat and while Nat knew very little about them, she didn’t doubt they could be mean.  Cats of any size could.  She approached it very cautiously.</p>
<p>The smallest dog, the Bichon, trotted up to Nat and sniffed at her shoe.  She made to shoo it away, but then saw the cat twitch, its ears swiveling back.  Perhaps it felt protective of the dogs?  Nat changed her mind and knelt down to let the little dog sniff her fingers, then began petting its head.  It wagged its tail and let its pink tongue loll out, happy with the attention.</p>
<p>That got the cat interested.  It stood up on its over-long legs and crept forward, pink nose twitching and spotted ears perked up.  Nat pretended to ignore it, focusing her attention on the Bichon.  Only when the cat bent to give her a sniff did she offer a hand to it.  It smelled her, then licked her with a rough tongue and allowed her to scratch its ears.  They had officially made friends with all the animals.</p>
<p>With that done, Nat opened the suite’s door a crack and peeked up and down the hallway.  Next to each door was a wall-mounted plastic folder where the crew could put mail and advertising for each passenger – at the moment most of them had some <em>welcome aboard</em> paperwork in them.  Each also had a slip of card bearing the occupant’s name.  The one at their own door said that the ‘Alcor’ suite belonged to <em>Lady Carlisle’s Family</em>.  On the right, the hallway turned a corner, down the stern of the ship.  On the left was another balcony suite, identified as the ‘Mizar’ suite for <em>Lady Carlisle</em>.</p>
<p>“Fancy suites are at the back,” Nat observed.  “I imagine they get fancier the higher up you go, because the richest people want to be nearest the decks.  We just have to find Helene Desrosiers.”</p>
<p>They split up again, making their way back and forth along the hallways to check each card in turn.  Natasha hadn’t gone more than a few rooms in one direction when a steward stopped her.</p>
<p>“Are you having trouble finding your stateroom, Ma’am?” he asked.</p>
<p>“No, I’m looking for a friend of mine,” Nat told him.  “Helene Desrosiers, we were going to meet up on board.  Is she on this deck?”</p>
<p>“I’m afraid I don’t know,” the man replied.  “You could have her paged to the guest services desk.”</p>
<p>Nat hadn’t thought of that.  If she did it, would Desrosiers come?  Or would she flee the ship?  “That’s a great idea,” she said.  “Thanks.”</p>
<p>The guest services desk was on deck six, adjoining an open space in the middle of the ship that was a miniature imitation of an Italian Piazza, complete with mosaic floors and fluted columns.  Staff were serving champagne and a mediocre party band was covering mediocre pop songs, while passengers indulged in some truly terrible dancing.  Overhead was an immense stained glass chandelier and a net full of inflated balloons, which would doubtless be released onto the dancers at some point in the near future.</p>
<p>There was a lineup at the guest services desk, with people shouting to be heard over the music.  Most of these were quick requests, but one of the employees was being shouted at by a woman complaining that she was an American citizen who’d paid in American dollars, and another was trying to have a conversation with an elderly man who hadn’t been able to hear very well even before the music had started.  Natasha simply had to wait her turn.</p>
<p>When she looked over her shoulder, she spotted Jim making his way through the crowd.  He was either doing the same thing she was, or else just looking to see if Desrosiers were among the partygoers.  Nat caught his eye and nodded to him.  He nodded back.</p>
<p>Finally, she reached the front of the line to make her request.  The man at the desk said it would be no problem, so with the American woman still yelling on his right and the old man on the left repeating, “<em>¿Disculpe?  ¿Disculpe?</em>”, he picked up the microphone.</p>
<p>“Would Helene Desrosiers please come to the guest services desk?” he announced.  “Helene Desrosiers, thank you.”</p>
<p>That had been easy – now they just had to wait.  Natasha thanked him and went to find a vantage point not already occupied by people who were gently nodding their heads or shifting their weight awkwardly from one foot to the other in time with the music.</p>
<p>Jim caught her hand.  “Want to dance?” he asked.</p>
<p>“This is not a good time,” she replied.</p>
<p>“Yeah, but there’s not gonna be a good time,” Jim reminded her.  “Come on.”  And he pulled her out onto the floor.</p>
<p>A Black Widow needed to know several ways to dance, and Natasha had been taught them all, from ballet to ballroom to exotic.  It was the ballroom that came out now, even though the band was only playing Katy Perry songs.  Jim didn’t know how to lead, so Natasha took charge and let him try to keep up as she spun behind him and even flipped upside-down, showing off just for the sake of showing off.  If Jim only had a few more days to live and wanted to spend part of it dancing, it might as well be <em>good</em> dancing.</p>
<p>Although their plan had been to keep a low profile, the crummy dancers on the floor naturally noticed when somebody began doing it <em>properly</em>, and they moved to make way for Nat and Jim.  Jim laughed nervously at the attention, but Nat decided to enjoy it.  “Lift me up, then tip me over,” she whispered to him.</p>
<p>He lifted her by the waist and spun in a circle, and she spotted them – Helene Desrosiers, being escorted by a man in a steward’s uniform.  The man had a mustache as a disguise but it was a very poor one – he was another homunculus.  They approached the guest services desk.</p>
<p>Jim lowered Nat to the ground again, and she hung from his arm as he dipped her, peering between people’s legs.  Desrosier’s Jimmy Choo pumps approached the desk and Nat saw them turn as the man there explained who had asked him to page her.</p>
<p>“Let me up!” she hissed to Jim.</p>
<p>He did so while the crowd applauded their stunt.  Nat caught Desrosiers’ eye, and the homunculus put a hand on her shoulder to guide her away.</p>
<p>Natasha took Jim’s hand and the two of them took a bow, as if this had all been part of a show.  People applauded and the song continued, and Nat tried to drag Jim through the crowd to catch up with Desrosiers.  They’d made it only a few steps before they found a woman in their way.</p>
<p>“Good afternoon,” she said, with a bright smile.  She was Latin American with a fairly strong accent, wearing a bright pink blouse and a nametag that called her <em>Fernandina</em>.  “I’m Ferni Cunha, the cruise director.  Are you professional dancers?”</p>
<p>“No,” said Nat.</p>
<p>“She is,” said Jim.  “I’m not.”</p>
<p>“We really have to catch up with a friend,” Nat added.</p>
<p>“I just wanted to say that we have several ballroom dancing events planned for our voyage,” Cunha said, turning to keep facing them as they sidled around her.  “We would love if you could attend.  What’s your room number?”</p>
<p>Desrosiers and the homunculus got into an elevator.</p>
<p>“I’m afraid I haven’t memorized it yet,” said Natasha calmly.  The elevator went up, vanishing above the ceiling of the piazza area.</p>
<p>“Do you have your cruise card?” Cunha asked.</p>
<p>To Nat’s relief, Sir Stephen and Sharon chose that moment to appear from out of the ship’s casino.  They must have heard the announcement, and came hoping they could catch Desrosiers at the desk.  Nat raised a hand and waved to them.  “Steve!  <em>There</em> you are!  Sorry, Ms. Cunha!” she added, and barged past the woman with Jim in tow.</p>
<p>“Where is she?” asked Sharon.  “Did she come?”</p>
<p>“She did, but she left when she realized it was us,” said Nat.  “She went upstairs.”</p>
<p>That meant they had to follow.  The four of them flew up the steps, which turned out to be a wise choice.  With so many people coming on board and getting settled, looking for their rooms or for the nearest open bar, the elevators were busy and slow.  Two decks up, they arrived to find Desrosiers and the homunculus just stepping out onto the promenade.  Nat lengthened her stride to catch up.</p>
<p>The homunculus turned to stop her in the doorway.  “I’m sorry, Ladies and Gentlemen,” he said to the group, “but this is the Diamond-Class Promenade only.  Unless you can show me your cruise card…”</p>
<p>Sir Stephen must have had enough.  He grabbed the fake steward by the shirt and threw him right through the open door, over the side, and into the water of the Bay of Naples.  Jim was horrified.  Sharon grabbed Nat’s arm.  Natasha had to fight the urge to laugh out loud in surprise – especially when heads turned all up and down the length of the deck as wealthy Diamond-Class passengers stared in shock at what had just happened.</p>
<p>There was only one thing to say.  With a beaming smile on her face, Nat held up a hand.  “No ticket!” she declared.</p>
<p>People murmured to each other.  A dozen clear plastic cruise cards came out of wallets and pockets, flashing a hologram of the line’s logo.</p>
<p>Desrosiers simply clung to the railing, staring at them.  Sir Stephen took one of her arms, and Nat the other one.</p>
<p>“Madame Desrosiers,” said Sir Stephen.  “We need a word.”</p>
<p>“Is there <em>nothing</em> we can do to escape from you people?” Desrosiers hissed as they led her back inside.</p>
<p>“No.  We’re implacable,” replied Nat.  “Sharon, can you text everybody?  Tell them to meet us in…” she glanced to her right.  “The Orion Pub.  Looks like we’re on Deck Twelve, midship.”</p>
<p>Like the piazza below, the pub was already full of people getting a head start on their vacation.  A large screen was playing videos of live performances from the 60’s and 70’s, and bar staff were serving drinks.  The group settled themselves around a large table.</p>
<p>A waiter materialized almost instantly.  “Anything to drink?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Water, please,” said Natasha.</p>
<p>“Mimosa,” said Desrosiers.</p>
<p>“Coffee,” said Clint.</p>
<p>“Water,” Sharon said.</p>
<p>“Are you all acquainted with our beverage package?” the waiter asked.  “For fifteen dollars a day you…”</p>
<p>“We’re fine,” Nat assured him.</p>
<p>The others arrived, which brought the waiter back to repeat his advertising spiel.  When they’d finally shooed him away, Sam opened the beer he’d ordered and shook his head.  “I’m re-thinking that <em>only travel by cruise ship</em> policy you suggested,” he told Sharon.  “No privacy.”</p>
<p>“I hadn’t thought of that at the time,” Sharon agreed.</p>
<p>Desrosiers just heaved a rather theatrical sigh.  “All right,” she said.  “What do you want <em>this</em> time?”</p>
<p>Nat wondered where they should even begin?  “You’ve got the notebooks now,” she said.  “You must have read them.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” Desrosiers nodded.  “The important parts, at least.  They’re full of things you wouldn’t possibly understand, interspersed with the ravings of a man suffering from mercury poisoning.”</p>
<p>“Those would be the parts about destroying civilization to ensure his own place in heaven,” said Sam.</p>
<p>“Exactly,” said Desrosiers.  “I suppose I can understand why you’re worried.  They do look frightening, but you have to understand that he wasn’t in his right mind.  We all poison ourselves on occasion, alchemists.  Some of us recover and some don’t.  He asked for my help so he can be sure to make the Philosopher’s Stone <em>properly</em>, without destroying anything, and I agreed because I’m just tired of fighting with him and quite frankly, because <em>you</em> lot have been more annoying in two weeks than he’s been in two centuries and that is an accomplishment I suspect you’re perversely proud of!”</p>
<p>The waiter returned, offering to refill drinks.  People mumbled no-thank-you and told him they didn’t need anything else, and Nat took the opportunity to examine everybody’s faces in turn.  She saw a lot of doubt.  An hour ago, they’d all been sure they were on the track of a religious zealot planning to bring about the apocalypse and now… well, wouldn’t Desrosiers be able to tell if something were up?</p>
<p>“Are you quite certain?” asked Sir Stephen.  “I do not trust Newton’s honesty, nor his sanity.”  The words <em>or yours</em> hung unspoken in the air.</p>
<p>“If you’re asking whether<em> I</em> trust him, I don’t,” Desrosiers said.  “That’s the entire reason I’m working with him.  I’m not about to let him blow anything up on purpose <em>or</em> by accident, especially not in the middle of Barcelona!”</p>
<p>Nat was astonished by this statement, and when she looked around it appeared that everyone else was, too.  So far on this merry chase, they’d always had some idea where to go next – all these places tied together, whether through the references to Newton’s name or the locations of his notebooks, but Nat couldn’t remember <em>anybody</em> mentioning Barcelona.</p>
<p>“What’s in Barcelona?” asked Sharon, equally confused.</p>
<p>“Another of his laboratories,” Desrosiers explained.  “He says his copy of the book is there, and he has a half-finished reactor already.  Did you really not know that?  You always seem to be right on our tails with this… I’d have almost been less surprised to arrive in Catalonia and find you there waiting for us.”</p>
<p>Nat shook her head.  “We hadn’t heard anything about Barcelona.”  What had they missed?  She looked at Jim to see if the name meant anything to him, with his subconscious insights into Newton’s mind.  He could only shrug.  “We assumed his final destination was Naples, because of the connection with his name and his desire to create God’s new city.”</p>
<p>“He said that was why he chose Barcelona, because Naples was entirely too obvious even if it were nicely ironic,” said Desrosiers – but she, too, was sitting up a little straighter.  Their doubts must be playing on her own.</p>
<p>“Are you meeting him there?” asked Natasha.</p>
<p>“No, we’ve already met on board the ship,” Desrosiers said.  “I spoke to him not ten minutes before I went to answer your summons to the desk.  We have things to prepare on board.”  Her voice quavered a little.  She was no longer certain.</p>
<p>It was a trick, Nat thought.  He’d tricked her into getting on the ship and then he’d somehow slipped off again.  He’d be standing on the dock watching <em>Scorpio</em>, the thing that was poison to his plan, sail away from him.</p>
<p>“Let’s find him,” she said.</p>
<p>They got up, and as they did they felt the shudder in the ship’s structure as the engines began to work.  <em>Ladies and Gentlemen</em>, said the voice of Director Cunha.  <em>This is your Cruise Director, welcoming you aboard the </em>Scorpio II<em> on behalf of all of us here at Zodiac!  If you’d like to join us on the Lido Deck, we have complimentary champagne and music with our own DJ Blaze as we sail away for Barcelona, Spain!</em></p>
<p>Natasha took the stairs two at a time, not even caring if the others were keeping up with her, as she ran from the Diamond Deck up to the Lido.  It was thronged with people laughing, dancing, and drinking, and colourful confetti fluttered through the air.  She squeezed her way through the railing, looked down, and found the bumpers along the edge of the wharf were already a dozen feet from the hell.  Two pilot boats were waiting to guide the <em>Scorpio II</em> out of the bay.</p>
<p>The others joined her, all of them scrutinizing the faces of the people watching from the docks, trying to see if Newton were among them.  He didn’t <em>appear</em> to be, but as Sir Stephen had observed, the ship was the size of a building and they were too high up to get a close look.  Nat couldn’t see his battered hat anywhere.</p>
<p>“He’s got to be on board,” said Desrosiers.  “He brought four of his homunculi to assist us, and you’ve only thrown one of them overboard so far!  His cabin was right next to mine.  If we go, he’ll be there.  He <em>must</em>.”</p>
<p>Her urgency made Natasha even more worried.  She was tempted to jump over the railing right now and swim back to Naples to look for Newton there, but what if Desrosiers were right and he were still on board?  But if they went to find him on the ship and he wasn’t there, they’d be too late to get back to shore.  Either way, they’d have lost precious time.</p>
<p>“I’ll show you,” Desrosiers insisted.</p>
<p>She went back down the steps to the Diamond Deck, and towards the back of the ship where the rooms with the best views were located.  The cards indicated that the Sirius Suite was occupied by Ms. H. Desrosiers.  Next to it, another said that the neighbouring Betelguese suite belonged to Mr. I. Neustadt.</p>
<p>Natasha rapped on the door.  “Betelguese, Betelguese, Betelguese,” she murmured, as if it would summon an alchemist as easily as a ghost.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0021"><h2>21. Awake the Giant</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There was no immediate answer.  Natasha knocked again, harder.  “Herr Neustadt!” she shouted.  “It’s Dr. Jones!  We need to talk to you!”</p>
<p>“Isaac!” Desrosiers joined in.  “Please, can we assure them that you’re not about to do something mad?”</p>
<p>The door opened, and there was Neustadt.  He was wearing beat-up denim shorts and a plaid shirt that had most definitely seen better days, with his gray hair hanging down around his face.  Somewhat to Nat’s surprise, he turned out <em>not</em> to have a bald spot under where his hat normally sat.</p>
<p>“Oh,” he said.  “It’s you again.”</p>
<p>Part of Natasha was intensely relieved to find him actually on board.  The plan they feared he was following depended on the presence of the volcano.  There were no volcanos in Barcelona, so he couldn’t bring about the end of the world there, at least not the same way.  Desrosiers had said she wouldn’t let him do it by accident, either… so maybe at the end of the day, it was okay.  Maybe they’d been panicking over nothing.  At the same time, another part of her was just <em>confused</em>.  It had all made so much <em>sense</em>, at least by the standards of alchemy.  Admittedly, those were pretty low.</p>
<p>“Isaac,” said Desrosiers.  “Tell them you’re not going to destroy the world.”</p>
<p>“Of <em>course</em> I’m not going to destroy the world,” said Neustadt.  “I <em>live</em> here, you know.  How did you get on board this ship?”</p>
<p>“We climbed,” said Natasha.  “Why are you going to Barcelona?”</p>
<p>“Because I like Barcelona,” Neustadt replied.  “Even alchemists occasionally do something just because we <em>want</em> to, you know.  We’re still human beings.”</p>
<p>Something was wrong.  Something was very, <em>very</em> wrong.  As far as she could see from Neustadt’s body language and speech, he was being truthful, but her gut was insisting that he couldn’t <em>possibly</em> be telling the truth.  It didn’t match anything she’d seen or heard on this trip.  What was going on?</p>
<p>“But Naples,” she said.  “Neustadt.  Newton.”</p>
<p>“I did once think that was very clever,” he agreed, “but I later thought better of it.  Sometimes being <em>too</em> clever makes you too easy to solve.”</p>
<p>“Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,” said a maid.  She was making her way down the narrow hallway with a cleaning cart.  The group spread out and pressed themselves against the walls so she could get by.</p>
<p>“Come into my cabin,” said Neustadt.  “We can talk there.”</p>
<p>They filed inside.  The Betelgeuse Suite was multiple rooms, full of the same beige and white furniture as the rest of the ship but with a few spots of colour in the form of original art on the walls.  The bed was almost entirely covered in far more pillows than one person could possibly need, and the doors were open to the balcony, with fresh sea air blowing in.  A steward was pouring tea, and there was a tray of sandwiches and pastries ready.</p>
<p>The steward was another homunculus, in uniform.</p>
<p>“Sit down, sit down,” said Neustadt.</p>
<p>Desrosiers sat first, leaning back in her chair and crossing her legs.  She was trying very hard to look at ease, but Nat could tell that the truth was she had nearly fallen over in relief.  The reappearance of the CAAP had terrified her, and she could not have been happier to know they were wrong.</p>
<p>The others pulled up chairs and seated themselves around the coffee table.  It made for a very crowded space, even in the big stateroom.  The homunculus poured tea.</p>
<p>“Cream and sugar?” he asked Jim, without a hint of recognition in either face or voice.</p>
<p>“I take it black,” Jim replied.</p>
<p>“You.”  Neustadt pointed at him.  “I’ve actually been hoping to see you again.”</p>
<p>“Yeah?” Jim asked cautiously.</p>
<p>“Perenelle has given me to understand that you’ve developed a measure of… ah… let’s say <em>self-awareness</em>… that I wouldn’t have credited you with.”</p>
<p>“You might say that,” Jim agreed.</p>
<p>“You wish to become human,” said Neustadt.</p>
<p>“Uh… I sort of think I’m already human,” Jim corrected him.  “I’d like to stay that way.”</p>
<p>Neustadt nodded thoughtfully.  “If you give me some time to work on it, I may be able to stabilize your body.  You must understand, though, that I cannot give you a soul.”</p>
<p>“What do you mean?” asked Jim.</p>
<p>“Exactly what I said,” Neustadt said.  “A body that can live a lifetime and then die, that can be created through science, but a soul that will live forever, only God can make.  Whatever you do during your life, you will be neither saved nor damned.  When you die, and you must, because we all must, even those of us who call ourselves immortals, you will simply <em>cease</em>.  Do you understand?”</p>
<p>He talked as if this were some great and terrible choice to be made.  That was the thinking of a deeply religious man, Natasha observed.  She was not religious.  She didn’t believe in immortal souls, and so to her, the choice would have been easy.  What did <em>Jim</em> believe, or did he even know?</p>
<p>“Then I guess it’s that much more important for me to live while I can,” Jim said.</p>
<p>“As long as we understand one another,” Neustadt nodded.</p>
<p>“There are stories which speak of ways soul-less creatures might obtain one,” said Sir Stephen.</p>
<p>“That’s true,” Desrosiers agreed.  “Paracelsus wrote about them.”</p>
<p>Sam, who seemed to be the one most familiar with fairy tales, thought about it.  “Is this like the thing where the mermaid or the dryad or whatever gains a soul by marrying a human?”</p>
<p>“Yes, exactly,” said Desrosiers.</p>
<p>Natasha knew that when she looked at Jim, he would be looking back at her.  She looked at him anyway, caught his eye, and laughed.  He laughed, too, nervously.</p>
<p>“Well.”  Neustadt smiled.  “It seems there may be nothing to worry about as far as souls are concerned.”</p>
<p>“Do I still have a soul to give him if I don’t believe in them?” Nat asked, only half-joking.</p>
<p>“You have a soul, Dr. Jones, the only thing you choose is what you do with it,” he told her.</p>
<p>“Right, whatever,” said Nat, waving her hand a bit in a gesture of dismissal – her right hand.  She glanced at Neustadt to see if he’d noticed it was healed.  He didn’t seem interested, but then, perhaps he took it for granted that the group had some alchemy of their own.</p>
<p>“Was it you and one of your homunculi we saw on the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius?” asked Sir Stephen.</p>
<p>“No, no,” Neustadt said.  “Perenelle and I were already boarding the ship them.”</p>
<p>“How can you be sure?” Nat asked.  “We didn’t say when we were there.”</p>
<p>“Goodness, you’re suspicious,” he scoffed.  “You only got into town today, and we boarded as soon as they finished disembarking the previous passengers.  We wouldn’t have had time to be up there while you were.”</p>
<p>That made sense.  What was going on?  Was Natasha just being jumpy and paranoid, or was Neustadt lying through his teeth?  She wished she could <em>tell</em>.  “Why have you been so secretive and pushy, if you never wanted anything but just to make unlimited gold?”</p>
<p>“Do you realize what a question that is?” Neustadt asked.</p>
<p>Now that he mentioned it… she did.  Unlimited gold was something human beings could kill for – and regularly had.  The Spaniards had all but wiped out the peoples of South America in a quest for gold.  Europeans had raided the tombs of Egypt for it, scattering treasures like Sitamun’s sarcophagus across the world.  Every culture that had known about gold had valued it.  Neustadt must have come to the entirely reasonable conclusion that the CAAP was out to steal the Philosopher’s Stone for themselves, or for the British government.  So had Desrosiers, and she had tried to stop them because she was worried they would blow something up, as the Minoans had blown up their island and Rasputin had blown up Siberia.</p>
<p>“Also, we alchemists are secretive creatures by nature,” Desrosiers put in.  “We don’t like to share with outsiders.  None of you are initiates, so it goes against everything our masters taught us to tell you anything at all.”</p>
<p>It all made sense, Natasha thought.  It made <em>too much</em> sense.  The idea of Newton destroying the world through Mount Vesuvius had made sense in an alchemy kind of way.  This all made <em>logical</em> sense and that was entirely the <em>wrong kind of sense</em>.  In chasing the Red Death across the British Isles, they’d had to get in touch with the kind of sense his sorcery and quest made.  In wandering around the Mediterranean they’d had to do the same for these alchemists, and this was just the <em>wrong</em> conclusion.</p>
<p>Or was it?  Desrosiers had told them that alchemy was science, not magic.  Maybe Nat was confusing it with sorcery and expecting the wrong things of it.  Or maybe she was too focused on the kind of sense Newton had been making in the eighteenth century when he’d been breathing too many mercury fumes.</p>
<p>Natasha wanted to tear her hair out.  She knew she <em>should</em> be reassured right now, but she just <em>couldn’t</em> be.</p>
<p>“May we follow you to Barcelona?” asked Sharon.  “We’re expected to do some kind of report on the fate of the mummy for the Queen, and we really need to see this through to the end.  And, if possible, get the book from the mummy case back.  IF that’s the only thing we can salvage, then so be it.”</p>
<p>“The British government has even less claim on the key than they do on the mummy,” said Desrosiers stiffly.  “It’s not a book in any event, it’s a clockwork code-breaking machine.  It was given to Nicolas by his teacher, and he gave it to me.  You cannot have it.”</p>
<p>That sounded pretty final.  “What about the notebooks?” asked Natasha.  “Those technically belong to Mr. Maslanka, or possibly to his wife.”</p>
<p>“The notebooks are <em>mine</em>.”  Neustadt stiffened up a bit.  “I may be <em>officially</em> dead but I am <em>actually</em> still alive, and I want to keep them.”  He then seemed to realize how his posture had changed, and made an effort to relax.  “You can come to Barcelona and see the Stone in action if you like, as long as you agree to keep the secret.  We are on this beautiful ship – I’ll get you rooms and cards so you can enjoy it properly.  Tomorrow we’ll be at sea all day.  We get to pass between Sardinia and Corsica where the coastline is absolutely lovely, and we can all relax a little before the hard work begins.”</p>
<p>He was trying to put them at ease.  Was he trying <em>too</em> hard?</p>
<p>“Do we have an agreement?” Neustadt asked.</p>
<p>“If we are to agree,” said Sir Stephen, “then there must be one thing I insist upon.  Without it, we must remain at odds.”</p>
<p>“What’s that?” Neustadt asked cautiously.</p>
<p>“You must make no more of <em>them</em>.”  He pointed to the homunculus dressed as a steward.  “And you must give me the remains you take them from, so I may have them properly interred on English soil.  The man was my friend, Sir James Buckeye, and I am tired of seeing his face everywhere and having it not know me.”</p>
<p>Neustadt looked at the homunculus, then at Jim sitting at the table, then at Sir Stephen again.  Sir Stephen nodded gravely.  There were things he would not compromise on, and this was at the top of the list.</p>
<p>“Very well,” said Neustadt.  “The remains are not here.  I have them hidden in my workshop in Athens.  When we’re finished in Barcelona, I will retrieve them for you.”</p>
<p>“I would like a token to show that you mean it,” said Sir Stephen.</p>
<p>Neustadt beckoned for the steward to approach  He did.  Newton stood, and reached up to pinch the man’s throat, on either side of his windpipe.  Nat remembered him telling them about the homunculi’s kill switch… pressure on the hyoid bone.  He’d threatened to do that to Jim.  Now they got to see what would have happened if he’d carried it through.</p>
<p>It was almost instantaneous.  Nat blinked, and the empty steward’s uniform dropped to the ground in a puff of gray dust.  Jim lowered his head and rubbed at his brow.  He hadn’t wanted to see that, but it was too late not to.</p>
<p>“Will that do?” asked Neustadt.</p>
<p>“For now,” Sir Stephen decided.</p>
<hr/>
<p>That evening they dined on baked salmon and tiramisu in the elegant surroundings of the Galileo Dining Room, all of them dressed to the nines.  It was certainly not where Natasha had expected to be at this point in their journey… it wasn’t somewhere she’d ever expected to be in her <em>life</em>.  She’d traveled by boat before, but never in any sort of luxury and never in a situation that would see her sipping wine while wearing a pink cocktail dress.  Even eating with the Queen of England wasn’t this formal – the Queen preferred to eat good wholesome food with her family and would drink brandy until she was telling bawdy jokes and somebody had to send the children to bed.  Here there was a string quartet playing, waiters were constantly at her elbow refilling glasses of wine and water, and the room was full of the murmur of quiet conversation and the clink of silver and crystal.</p>
<p>As promised, Neustadt had pulled some strings to get them a room they didn’t have to share with Lady Carlisle’s menagerie, and he’d even found them some evening wear, though nat had no idea where.  Sir Stephen’s tux was a little too small for him, so he was moving very carefully as he ate, worried about tearing it.  Allen, not a formal diner by nature, looked so stiff he barely dared to move at all.  Jim’s hair was pulled back in a man-bun and he’d shaved, and in a tux Nat had to admit he looked very attractive.</p>
<p>“So, the apple,” Sam said.</p>
<p>“The apple!”  Neustadt laughed.  “I never expected <em>that</em> to be the story I’d be famous for!  It actually came from an argument with one of my students.  I was trying to explain that the same force which causes things to fall on Earth also keeps them moving in Heaven, and he simply refused to understand.  The metaphor of the cannon was doing nothing for him.  He said that when he shook a tree, the apples fell down, rather than going into orbit!  So I <em>threw</em> an apple, and asked him to imagine it going so fast and high that, rather than land on the other side of the wall, by the time it reached where the ground ought to be the ground had curved away from it, and he <em>finally</em> understood!</p>
<p>“Then I thought,” Newton went on, “what is the <em>apple</em>?  What does it mean?”  He looked expectantly around the table, waiting for somebody to answer.</p>
<p>“Knowledge?” Allen guessed.</p>
<p>“Yes, exactly!” Newton said, a smile on his face.  “The apple which opened the eyes of Adam and Eve!  Thereafter I used a falling apple as an example of something under the influence of gravity, and the rest of the story, that one had hit me on the head and inspired me, grew all on its own.”  He snorted.  “I think people like to find outside explanations for a great man’s insights.  It makes them feel better that they don’t share his genius.”</p>
<p>Natasha was still nervous.  This was all <em>too nice</em>.  Maybe it was just that she’d never been to a formal dinner where something <em>wasn’t</em> going on behind the scenes, but the idea that Neustadt really was being honest with them still seemed absurd.  Was she just too comfortable with secrets, that she couldn’t feel at ease with open-ness?</p>
<p>“What are you going to do with your gold, once you get it?” asked Sharon.</p>
<p>“Oh, I’m not going to make gold, actually,” said Neustadt.  “I’ll make <em>some</em>, but the Stone can make anything if it’s got a sample to work from.  I’m going to use it to create large perfect sapphires for interstellar lasers.”</p>
<p>Sam nearly choked on his wine.  “You’re going to try to communicate with <em>aliens</em>?”</p>
<p>“Yes!” said Newton.  “Alchemy is nothing but a search for the truth, for the templates of nature.  Other beings in the cosmos must be looking for them, too.  Think of what they could teach us if we could communicate!”</p>
<p>“Alien alchemists.”  Sam shook his head.  “Now there’s a phrase I never thought I’d hear.”</p>
<p>Natasha caught Sir Stephen’s eye.  He gave a slight nod, and she returned it – he was worried, too.  She tried Allen next.  He was still sitting there nervously, having not even touched his vichyssoise.</p>
<p>“It’s soup, Dad,” she murmured.  “You eat it.”</p>
<p>“It’s cold,” he said.</p>
<p>“It’s supposed to be,” Nat told him.  “Blame the French.”</p>
<p>Allen picked up his spoon.  “I think you’ve been living in England too long, Ginger Snap,” he said.  The string quartet finished a piece, and the people at the tables applauded.</p>
<p>Nat smiled – if he were using that nickname for her, he must be feeling a little better.</p>
<p>“So are you going to marry Jim?” he asked.</p>
<p>He had intended this to be a private question, but he’d had to say it a little louder than he otherwise would have, in order to talk over the sound of applause.  At the same moment, however, the clapping died away, and in the silence left behind, everybody at the table heard.  They all turned to look at Nat, and Jim himself banged his elbow on the table in startlement and muttered a curse.</p>
<p>“Sorry,” said Allen quickly.  “I mean… well, it’s obviously up to you.”  He lowered his voice again, but it was no good.  Everybody was listening now.  “But I wanted to say, don’t do it just for the soul thing.  If you’re going to marry him, be sure that you love him.”</p>
<p>“Dad,” Nat said.  Didn’t he realize he was only forcing his foot further into his mouth?</p>
<p>He seemed to, but he was determined to continue regardless.  “What I’m saying is, don’t rush.  Mr. Neustadt said he could live a long time, so don’t feel you have to hurry.  Your mother and I knew each other for two years before we settled down.  We figured if we could put up with each other that long, and fight and forgive each other, then we were okay for the long haul.”</p>
<p>“Dad!” Nat insisted.  “Just… please stop.”</p>
<p>“I have thought from the beginning that Buckeye would have liked you, Natalie,” said Sir Stephen.  “He would have approved the match.  I know you said you do not care what Buckeye would have thought of you, Jim,” he added, “but I know he would have felt responsible for you, as he would for a younger brother or maybe a son.”</p>
<p>“You know what?” asked Jim.  “She’s right.  Just <em>stop</em>.”</p>
<p>The other people at the table – and a couple of others nearby – laughed.  Some of it was honest laughter from people who weren’t familiar with the situation but knew it was embarrassing.  Some of it was nervous laughter from people who found it awkward at the obvious, surface level of having one’s relationships discussed by friends and family.  Nat’s laughter was nervous because she was nervous in general.</p>
<p>After dinner there was a comedian performing in the theatre, and more dancing in the piazza.  The big-screen TV in the Orion Pub was showing a soccer game.  The spa and casino were open for business.  There were a million options available for people who wanted to enjoy themselves, but Natasha wasn’t interested in any of them.  She went out on the Lido Deck where the last glow of sunset was still visible in the sky, and leaned on the railing at the back of the ship.  The lights of Naples were still just barely visible on the horizon.</p>
<p>Sir Stephen joined her.  “This isn’t right,” he said.</p>
<p>“Oh, really?  I thought it was just me,” said Nat sarcastically.</p>
<p>“Neustadt is luring us into some kind of trap, and Madame Flamel as well,” Sir Stephen said.  “We are all trapped already, here on this ship with the land far away.  A gilded cage is a cage regardless.”</p>
<p>“Yes.  Yes, it is,” Natasha said.  “I’ve been thinking… if Neustadt wants to destroy civilization and use the Philosopher’s Stone to do it, <em>could</em> he do it from a ship?  We’re out in the middle of the Mediterranean with nobody to stop him.  He said himself we’ll be at sea all day tomorrow.  What if he makes the stone right here, and uses the ocean somehow?  We’re on a fault line.  It’s not as convenient as the volcano, but there’s probably a way to make it work.”</p>
<p>“I think it more likely he means to destroy the ship somehow,” said Sir Stephen.  “Or to abandon it and return to Naples, leaving us all stranded and unable to stop him.”</p>
<p>“If he can get off, we can get off,” said Nat.  Her brain was already starting to work.  In order to leave the ship in the middle of the ocean, he would have to use one of the lifeboats.  There were some two dozen of these, each able to hold about two hundred people in an emergency.  “He would have to do something to be sure we couldn’t follow him… like destroy all the lifeboats so everybody else would be stuck on the boat until Barcelona.  How would he do that?”  The security of the lifeboats would be one of the crew’s most important concerns.</p>
<p>The sky to the east was quite dark now, with stars beginning to appear.  The lights of <em>Scorpio II</em>, with its many rooms and parties, meant that only the very brightest were visible, hanging above the far-off lights of the port they’d left.  A glint of orange sunlight still just barely illuminated the top of the quiescent Mount Vesuvius.</p>
<p>“Where is Neustadt right now?” asked Natasha.</p>
<p>“I believe he and Madame Flamel went to the casino,” said Sir Stephen, disapproving.  “When you can make gold, it is nothing to gamble it away.”</p>
<p>Nat nodded.  “While he’s gone, we should search his cabin,” she decided.  “I think it’s directly below us.”  Now that Desrosiers had shown them where it was, she knew she could find it again.</p>
<p>“Are you suggesting we climb down the outside of the ship?” asked Sir Stephen.</p>
<p>“No,” said Natasha, “and definitely not in this dress!”  It barely reached her knees.  “I’m just saying, it’s down there.”</p>
<p>They took the stairs down, and Nat picked the lock on Neustadt’s stateroom.  The cleaning staff had been by, and everything was immaculate.  She started going through closets and drawers, leafing through Neustadt’s clothes and the books and magazines provided by the cruise line.</p>
<p>“Look for those notebooks, too,” she said, as Sir Stephen checked under the bed.  “And anything that might be the key – Desrosiers said it was a machine.”  If those things <em>didn’t</em> belong in a museum, then they at least ought to be somewhere nobody could use them.  The bottom of the sea might do very well.</p>
<p>“Nothing under here,” said Sir Stephen, and looked over her shoulder at the contents of the closet.  “Why would one man need a dozen pairs of shoes?” he asked.  He came from a time when people were lucky to own one.</p>
<p>“Some women have ten times that many,” said Natasha.</p>
<p>“Yes, but women’s shoes are all different,” Sir Stephen pointed out.  “These are nearly identical.”</p>
<p>“Then I have no idea,” Natasha said.  She shut a drawer that contained nothing but paperwork from the cruise line, and went on to the one below it.  “This one’s empty.”</p>
<p>The light coming in the back window seemed brighter here than it had been on deck.  Was there an outside lamp on a timer, maybe?  Was Neustadt coming back and about to catch them here?  Natasha shut the second dresser drawer and straightened up to look outside.</p>
<p>The sky behind them was on fire.</p>
<p>For a moment she couldn’t figure out what she was looking at.  Surely the sun was <em>setting</em> – she and Sir Stephen had been on the deck looking at stars not ten minutes ago.  Why was it suddenly bright in the east?  Then she remembered the glow on the top of the volcano.  She’d assumed it was the light of the setting sun, peeking over the horizon.  What if she’d been wrong?</p>
<p>“Sir Steve,” she said, and pushed the sliding door open to step out onto the balcony.</p>
<p>The volcano was far away and getting further by the minute, but there was no mistaking the cloud that was billowing up and the bright orange glow underneath it.  Something was definitely happening there.  It might have been an eruption… but she remembered the two figures on the mountainside, and how something they’d done had seemed to drain the volcano dry of its energy.  This was more like what Mount Etna had looked like a few days ago.</p>
<p>Mount Etna, which they thought Neustadt had also drained.  Could he have brought its energy to Vesuvius, to feed into the mountain <em>there</em>?  Had the two figures on the slopes been more homunculi, left behind to do Newton’s dirty work while he was safely far away?  No, that didn’t work, because his plan in the notebooks was to use the holy feather to make himself the antichrist and go to heaven.  He would have to <em>be</em> there.  Unless he’d already left the ship…</p>
<p>… or if the man on board were a decoy.  A false man, which was something they <em>knew</em> Neustadt could make.</p>
<p>“<em>Fuck</em>!” Nat exclaimed.</p>
<p>Sir Stephen stared at her.  “I beg your pardon?”</p>
<p>“Fuck, fuck, and <em>fuck</em>!”  She threw her purse at the wall, and ran for the elevators.</p>
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